A woman taking a selfie outside the Drum Tower in Beijing. Chinese people are enjoying the Lunar New Year and visiting tourist sites around the country following the lifting of strict Covid-19 restrictions, allowing a return to many aspects of normal life. — AP
ISTANBUL: The Chinese economy is expected to grow further in 2023 thanks to policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Turkyish experts say.
Selcuk Colakoglu, director of the Ankara-based Turkyish Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview that China’s economy has entered a period of solid recovery, especially after the optimisation of Covid-19 control measures at the beginning of this year.
Colakoglu said that so many Chinese people travelled within China and abroad during the Spring Festival that it caused a boom in almost all sectors, most notably in transportation and tourism.
This will grow even further after the holiday season when both Chinese and international business people are expected to travel for business purposes, he said.
“All these activities will bring more positive circulations in the business world, and there will be more positive developments for Chinese sectors.”
Colakoglu praised the Chinese government’s determination to increase factory productivity and to make China’s industry and supply chains more resilient and safe with qualified Chinese human resources within the framework of its high-quality growth.
“Chinese human resources are on the rise and China has a more qualified labour force,” he said.
“So all these plans for achieving high-quality development are underway.”
Echoing Colakoglu, Baris Doster, an academic at the Istanbul-based Marmara University, said that China will continue to be the engine of the world economy through the CPC’s correct targets and policies.
“Stable, healthy, and sustainable growth and a development in harmony with the environment and nature stand out among the goals of the CPC,” Doster told Xinhua in an interview.
China’s economic achievements in 2022 proved that the government’s policies have been bearing fruits despite the pandemic, he said.
“In other words, it (all these positive signs about China’s economy) shows that the goals of the CPC are met.”
Despite pandemic-induced setbacks, China’s economy still grew 3% year-on-year to a record high of 121 trillion yuan (US$18 trillion or RM77 trillion) in 2022, with the increment standing at 6.1 trillion yuan (RM3.8 trillion), equivalent to the economic aggregate of a medium-sized country. — Xinhua
