Chinese President Xi Jinping stated on Tuesday that China will speed up infrastructure development, including oil and gas pipelines, as well as the development of its green and low-carbon energy base, reported Reuters, quoting Chinese state media, Xinhua News Agency.
According to Xi, who was chairing a meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, China would build a number of regional, general aviation, and freight airports, as well as enhance fiscal spending to meet the country’s infrastructure financing requirements.
Officials in attendance agreed that China’s infrastructure was still incompatible with the country’s economic and security needs. In order to ensure national security, grow domestic demand, and achieve other goals, it is critical to strengthen infrastructure construction across the board.
In Beijing’s latest move to salvage economic development, President Xi Jinping made a bold vow to accelerate infrastructure investment, a policy that may prove less effective this time around as officials adopt a hardline approach to bringing Covid outbreaks under control.
The world’s second-largest economy is on the verge of a significant slowdown as COVID-19 limitations hammer consumer spending throughout a huge portion of the country. The property market is in a slump, and exports are expected to decline much further.
According to the economics conference, new types of infrastructure such as supercomputing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence platforms, and broadband would be included in the government’s effort. It was also said that the government would speed up the development of green and low-carbon energy bases, strengthen oil and gas pipeline networks, and construct a number of regional and cargo airports.
With the government doubling down on its Covid Zero approach, locking down major hubs like Shanghai, speeding up construction may be impossible to achieve. As the city conducts mass testing of its 22 million residents, fears of a similar shutdown are mounting. Today, however, Xi’s commitment fueled a stock rally, with the benchmark CSI 300 Index gaining as high as 2.7 percent, the best performing major Asian market, led by technology and industrial firms.
