Chinese President Xi Jinping proclaimed on Monday that “reunification” with Taiwan is “essential for China’s revitalization,” during a speech at the closing session of the National People’s Assembly (PNA), the main political event. of the country each year. Xi said that reunification is “a common aspiration of the Chinese nation” and stressed the need to “oppose external forces” and “secessionists.”
Xi Jinping began an unprecedented third term as China’s president with fresh pledges to ensure stability and strengthen party leadership as he faces a future of slower growth and further confrontation with the US. “Security is the foundation for development and stability is the precondition for prosperity,” Xi said. He also vowed to oppose foreign interference in Taiwan, a veiled reference to growing US support for Taipei’s democratically elected government.
The president, re-elected last Friday by the Chinese Parliament for a third presidential term (2023-2028) unprecedented among his predecessors, called for defending the “principle of one China” and “adhering to the ‘1992 Consensus'”, by which Taipei and Beijing acknowledge that there is only one China although they differ on which is the ‘real’ one.
Likewise, Xi stressed the need to “promote the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Strait”, after a year in which tensions between Beijing and Taipei reached unprecedented heights in decades during the visit last August to the island of Taiwan. the then Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.
Taiwan has been governed autonomously under the official name of the Republic of China since 1949, when the KMT nationalists retreated there after losing the Chinese civil war against the communists, so Beijing continues to consider it a rebel province and claims its sovereignty. The Chinese Communist Party has never ruled the island.
The new Chinese premier, Li Qiang, tried to reassure the country’s private sector on Monday, saying that the environment for entrepreneurial companies will improve and that all types of companies will be treated equally.
Li, the former head of the Shanghai Communist Party, was sworn in as prime minister on Saturday during the annual session of China’s National People’s Congress and is on a mission to revive the world’s second-largest economy after three years of Covid-19 restrictions.
In his public debut at a news conference, President Xi Jinping’s close ally said China will take steps to boost employment and urged decision-makers at all levels to “make friends” with employers. “Developing the economy is the fundamental solution to create jobs,” Li, 63, said at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing after the close of the parliamentary session.
“Last year there were some incorrect comments about the development of the private economy, which worried some businessmen,” Li said in his televised address, without elaborating. “Entrepreneurs or private companies will enjoy a better environment and a wider space for their development. (…) We will create a level playing field for all types of market entities and we will do more to support private entrepreneurs to grow and prosper”.
Li is facing challenges such as weak consumer and private industry confidence, weak demand for exports and worsening relations with the United States. At the opening of the annual parliamentary session, China set a GDP growth target of around 5% percent, its lowest target in nearly three decades, after the economy grew just 3% last year. Reaching the target will not be easy at a time when China is facing many difficulties this year, Li said.
