China is able to weather the escalating trade war with the U.S. and achieve its economic targets for this year, an official at the nation’s top economic planning body said.
The impact on industrial production, employment and consumer prices will be “controllable,” and China will maintain proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, Cong Liang, a spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
China’s economic expansion slowed to 6.7 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter as Beijing’s deleveraging campaign began to bite. While that was the slowest pace since 2016, it topped the annual growth target of 6.5 percent. The impact of the trade war with the U.S. appears limited so far, but continued escalation could sap growth momentum.
Cong said China will carry out structural deleveraging in a “targeted, gradual and orderly way” and prevent the creation of new local government debt and implicit public debt. It will also seek to encourage foreign-direct investment and boost consumption, while increasing trade with the European Union and Southeast Asia, he said.
Source: Bloomberg
