Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday warned other countries not to “dictate” to Beijing what reforms it should undertake. “No one is in a position to dictate to the Chinese people what should or should not be done,” Xi said at a Communist Party of China event in Beijing, The Guardian reported. “We must resolutely reform what should and can be changed, we must resolutely not reform what shouldn’t and can’t be changed.”
The event was held to mark the 40th anniversary of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms in December 1978.
But Xi stressed the importance of a state-controlled economy. “The great banner of socialism has always been flying high over the Chinese land,” he said at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, AFP reported. “The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the greatest advantage of the socialist system.”
Xi claimed the Communist Party’s leadership and strategy for the country have been “absolutely correct” so far. He promised to support state-owned sectors while continuing market reforms in other areas.
The Chinese leader claimed that the country has “demonstrated the vitality of scientific socialism with indisputable facts”, Xinhua reported. He asserted that hunger, shortages and poverty were all things of the past in China, and that the People’s Liberation Army has become an “invincible force”.
“China cannot develop itself in isolation from the world, and the world needs China for global prosperity,” Xi added. He said Beijing had stayed committed to the opening up of the economy due to its “internal and international imperatives”. The Chinese leader’s comments come amid a trade war with the United States.
China’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate was 6.5% in the July-September, its slowest quarter of growth since 2009, Reuters reported last month. Economists from Beijing’s Renmin University have projected that China will grow at 6.6% in 2018-’19 and 6.3% in 2019-’20.
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