MNI POLICY: China Seen Keeping Growth Over 6% in 2020: Scholar

     BEIJING (MNI) - China still has the capacity, including fiscal resources,

to maintain its economic growth goal above 6% next year, Wang Xiaoguang, deputy

director of economic research at the Party School of Central Committee of

Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said on Wednesday. 

     Wang spoke at a briefing by senior scholars from the school on the CCP's

Fourth Plenum, which took place last month. Here are the key points:

     - In terms of China-U.S. relations, next year 2020 will be relatively

quiet, given the U.S. presidential election and China has refrained from

escalating the tensions. China has focused instead on more opening up. Its

effort will gain more international acceptance as no one benefits from a trade

war. 

     - China's economy has competitiveness. More than half of the impact from

the tariffs has been born by the U.S. side. The trade war has made China focus

on improving its own strength, including its systems of governance. It must

increase opening-up and promote innovation. 

     - China will maintain the mixed-ownership economy model, which is oriented

on efficient management of assets and capital operations. The intention is for

improving quality, not the expansion of the state sector. It's to improve

competitiveness, maintain control, as SOEs can better serve as a tool for

rebalancing growth, innovation, and the ability to manage risks. 

     - There is no such thing as advocating for SOEs taking a bigger role and

pushing back the private sector. There has been strategic and profit-driven

adjustments, with state shares in some industries advancing and falling in

others. The shares of SOEs in manufacturing and finance have all declined.  

     - While the theme of the Fourth Plenum was mainly about systems of

governance, economy maintains central to Chinese policymaking. 

     - China's political reform won't pursue the West's multi-party model. It

seeks to enhance its current model led by the CCP, said Zhu Lingjun, a scholar

specializing on the building of the party. China also seeks to have

checks-and-balances in its system, but some of the Western nations achieved

nothing even with the checks in place. China's system is about decentralizing

power and giving it the relevant tools. About 95% of Chinese officials and more

than 80% civil servants are CCP members. To expand the monitoring to cover all

the officials, China established The State Committee of Supervisory.

--MNI Beijing Bureau; +86 10 8532 5998; email: william.bi@mni-news.com

[TOPICS: M$A$$$,M$Q$$$,MC$$$$,MT$$$$,MBQ$$$,MGQ$$$]