Excluding 2020, when COVID-19 upended the global economy, last year’s economic growth rate was the lowest since 1976, the last year of Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution.
Although China’s economy appears to be rebounding strongly from the pandemic — manufacturing activity in February, for example, smashed expectations, expanding at the fastest pace in more than a decade — Chinese officials have warned of risks ahead.
While acknowledging China’s “vast potential and momentum for further growth,” Li pointed to the rise of “uncertainties in the external environment,” including high inflation, and “external attempts to suppress and contain China” — a thinly-veiled reference to the country’s heated geopolitical competition with the US.
China’s economy faces serious long-term challenges domestically, too, including an enormous housing bubble and a shrinking working population due to a rock-bottom birth rate.
Many economists believe that China’s high-growth era — characterised by decades of double-digit expansion each year — is now in the past.
除了因新冠肺炎而颠覆世界经济的2020年之外,去年的经济增长率是毛泽东文化大革命最后一年1976年以来的最低值。
尽管中国经济似乎正从这场大流行中强劲反弹——比如2月份的制造业活动打破了人们的预期，以十多年来最快的速度扩张——但中国官员警告称，未来的风险依然存在。
李鹏承认中国”巨大的潜力和进一步增长的动力”，同时指出”外部环境的不确定性”（包括高通胀）和”遏制和遏制中国的外部尝试”——这是中国与美国激烈的地缘政治竞争的一个细枝末节。
中国经济在国内也面临着严重的长期挑战，包括巨大的房地产泡沫和因最低出生率而减少的工作人口。
许多经济学家认为，中国的高增长时代——以每年两位数的增长为特征——已经一去不复返了。