For shut watchers of Chinese language politics, the nation’s annual parliamentary assembly this yr despatched an necessary message: Beijing plans to spice up funding in excessive expertise, help the flagging financial system and metal itself for a extra hostile geopolitical surroundings.
The week-long session of the rubber stamp Nationwide Individuals’s Congress, which wrapped up this week, was characterised by rhetoric portray China as an island of stability in a chaotic world whereas additionally celebrating synthetic intelligence breakthroughs by Chinese language corporations reminiscent of DeepSeek.
“That is the ‘DeepSeek congress’,” stated Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King’s School, London.
Brown stated the timing of the NPC session, coming simply as US President Donald Trump’s quickly altering commerce and international insurance policies threatened to unleash worldwide chaos, had put additional strain on Chinese language leaders to distinguish themselves from the US.
For Beijing, “It was: ‘Oh my God, we’ve been speaking for years a couple of sophisticated world state of affairs and now it has actually hit and we’ve received to sound like adults as a result of everybody else goes nuts’,” he stated.
At a press convention on the NPC, international minister Wang Yi burdened China’s steady strategy.
“The world immediately is interwoven with turmoil, and certainty is more and more turning into a scarce useful resource globally,” Wang stated. “Chinese language diplomacy will stand steadfastly on the correct aspect of historical past and the aspect of human progress. We are going to present certainty to this unsure world.”
Every spring, about 5,000 delegates and members collect in Beijing for the conferences of the NPC and advisory Chinese language Individuals’s Political Consultative Convention, that are collectively often called the “Two Periods”.
The classes are intently watched by traders for indicators of Beijing’s financial and strategic targets, with analysts intently parsing the Communist party-speak of official speeches and paperwork.
Beijing has in recent times prioritised nationwide safety over “growth” — typically a byword for financial progress, analysts say. However final September, with GDP progress slowing sharply as a result of a long-running property sector disaster, leaders switched their emphasis to boosting consumption, saying a financial stimulus and later attempting to reinvigorate the non-public sector.
In his “work report”, an annual account of the federal government’s achievements and targets delivered on the opening of the NPC, China’s second-ranked chief Premier Li Qiang this yr burdened the necessity to “higher guarantee each growth and safety”.
However he additionally burdened the significance of strengthening home demand — the work report used the phrase “consumption” 32 instances, up from 21 instances in 2024, extra even than frequent references to “expertise”, at 29 mentions.
Li additionally launched into the work report lexicon for the primary time the time period “embodied AI”, which means AI-powered robots or machines.
The central authorities funds for 2025, introduced through the NPC session, set out an 8.3 per cent year-on-year enhance in spending on the expertise sector — almost twice the rise for common fiscal spending and better than for social welfare.
Delegates enthusiastically embraced Li’s emphasis on tech, with a number of interviewed by the Monetary Occasions espousing “embodied AI” and the necessity to double down on semiconductor funding.
“Humanoid robots have a promising future,” stated delegate Jiang Yuanxun on the closing session of the NPC within the Nice Corridor of the Individuals, the sprawling Mao-era political advanced on Beijing’s Tiananmen Sq.. “DeepSeek is altering our lives.”
Zhang Yunquan, a CPPCC member and knowledgeable on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences, stated “the American expertise chokehold” meant native AI pioneers reminiscent of DeepSeek confronted issues accessing sufficient computing energy.
“China will certainly make investments extra funds, expertise, and groups into growing its personal high-end computing chips,” Zhang stated. “Eventually we are going to break by way of the computing energy bottleneck.”
In aspect conferences with delegations from provincial delegations, senior leaders took pains to warn cadres that the general financial system and world surroundings had been tough.
They repeatedly used the phrase “a fancy and extreme state of affairs of accelerating exterior strain”, stated Manoj Kewalramani, writer of a publication that gives day by day interpretations of the Communist occasion’s flagship Individuals’s Every day newspaper.
“They had been conveying to everyone that issues are going to be tough . . . and we simply must study to dwell with it,” he stated.
For some NPC delegates, China’s weak home financial system, which is affected by deflationary pressures, was a extra urgent situation than world turmoil.
“Shopper spending is certainly poor this yr, even worse than final yr,” stated one delegate, Li Dexiang, who can be chair of retailer Guizhou Heli Grocery store Group. “I really feel that unusual persons are more and more reluctant to spend cash.”
On property, Premier Li for the primary time used simple language to explain the sector’s stoop, saying the federal government would “stem the downturn and restore stability in the actual property market”. A yr earlier, he had stated solely that it will “defuse dangers in actual property”.
The work report was additionally extra frank in regards to the authorities’s issues with international direct funding, which has suffered document falls in recent times. This yr it talked of “stabilising” FDI, whereas in 2024 it spoke solely of “attracting” extra international funding.
There was additionally some dialogue on the NPC of worries about social stability — a difficulty that flared final yr after there have been a number of acts of mass violence.
The work report of the Supreme Individuals’s Procuratorate, additionally submitted to the NPC, particularly talked about by title two males convicted of mass killings in southern China’s Zhuhai and jap Wuxi.
Kewalramani stated a gathering between President Xi Jinping and the delegation from the Individuals’s Liberation Military had additionally despatched an necessary message. On the assembly, Xi, who has been pushing a broad anti-graft crackdown on the PLA, demanded “the institution of a sound and efficient oversight system to completely examine and deal with corruption” within the armed forces.
Really helpful
King’s School’s Brown stated that whereas the NPC session conveyed “comparatively pleasant language about international funding and China being an internationally accountable participant”, it stated little about how Beijing would possibly exploit alternatives created by Trump’s bruising strategy in the direction of third nations.
Overseas minister Wang’s press convention did give a attainable trace of Beijing’s considering, nevertheless. Wang touted a plan to increase the Brics group of rising nations and hinted at China’s hopes for the “world south” — the mass of unaligned growing nations that Beijing has been courting partially to undermine US world affect.
“We are going to proceed to increase equal, open and co-operative world partnerships,” Wang stated, saying Beijing hoped to “write a brand new chapter of unity . . . with the worldwide south”.
Extra reporting by Wenjie Ding in Beijing
