New development paradigm seen as enhancing economic sustainability

The pledge stressed this week by Chinese President Xi Jinping to continue to advance high-quality development could provide the world with valuable experiences, experts said.

"The world is looking forward to how China will transition from high-speed growth to high-quality growth," said Austin Ong, co-founder of the Philippines-China Friendship Society.

Developing countries with a large population, such as the Philippines, have much to learn from how China operates the people-centered development that was emphasized in Xi's speech, said Ong, who is also the program manager of the Manila-based think tank, Integrated Development Studies.

Addressing the closing meeting of the first session of the 14th National People's Congress in Beijing on March 13, Xi said China will unswervingly advance high-quality development.

The country should fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts and accelerate efforts to create a new pattern of development, said Xi.

Mehmood Ul Hassan Khan, executive director of the Center for South Asia and International Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, said he hopes that Xi's new development paradigm would further enhance China's economic stability and sustainability during 2023 and beyond.

It would be a giant step toward achieving the desired goals of building a great modern socialist country and advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, said Khan.

The implementation of the strategy for invigorating China through science and education, the workforce development strategy and the innovation-driven development strategy would further diversify the macroeconomy, systematize the massive modernization drive, and provide new impetus to the private sector, he said.

President Xi's renewed call to rejuvenate the Chinese nation was a familiar one, and stuck to the themes laid out in his address at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, said Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies.

Specifically, the next five years are crucial in kicking off the next chapter of China's socialist modernization. While modernization and development are the central focus, the consolidation of national security is an essential requirement to achieve this modernization.

In totality, Xi's speech was a call to the Chinese nation to grow into its role as the major global economic and political power that China has fast become on the international stage, said Gupta.

Restructuring economy

Sawidji Widoatmodjo, the dean of the economics faculty at Tarumanagara University in Jakarta, Indonesia, said China is restructuring its economy for sustainable development after recording "as a phenomenon of the world's fastest major economic growth in the world, in the world's history".

Though China's economic growth has long been based on investment, low-cost industries, and exports, Widoatmodjo said the government is now changing its approach to emphasize consumption, service-based industries, and paying attention to the domestic market.

Xi's ideas of promoting a global community with a shared future and a world of lasting peace, universal security, common prosperity, openness, tolerance and beauty constitute the core and essence of his diplomatic philosophy, said Talat Shabbir, director of the China-Pakistan Study Centre at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.

"This idea, without any doubt, will contribute immensely in the development of the Asian region and the world at large," said Shabbir.

Through the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative that Xi proposed, China will add more stability and positive energy to the peaceful development of the world, and foster a favorable international environment for the development of the region and China itself, said Shabbir.

Congratulating Xi on his election as the president, Francis Chua, chairman emeritus of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the Chinese president is a modern hero who advocates peace and order.

China's wisdom is much needed in envisioning a new global governance framework that can deliver peace and prosperity through multilateralism, said Adhere Cavince, a scholar of international relations with a focus on China-Africa cooperation, in Nairobi, Kenya.

On international cooperation, President Xi has expanded the frontiers of development partnership with the Belt and Road Initiative, Cavince said, and China's predictable, durable and inclusive foreign policy stance has seen Beijing win many friends around the world.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, said that it is important for China to try and retain its competitiveness, not only in terms of technological progress but also global economic competitiveness.

Wang Xiaodong in Nairobi, Leonardus Jegho in Jakarta and Yifan Xu in Washington contributed to this story.