China holds major financial conference as leaders maneuver to get slowing economy back on track

Bangkok: China’s leaders are expected to search for ways to mend the country’s fractured property market, create jobs for millions of unemployed youths and spur faster growth in a meeting that reportedly began Monday in Beijing.

The National Financial Work Conference, usually held twice a decade, is expected to further fortify leader Xi Jinping’s control of the country’s $61 trillion financial sector. It follows the announcement last week of plans to issue 1 trillion yuan ($330 billion) in bonds for infrastructure projects and disaster prevention.

By dipping deeper into deficit, the government is looking to counter a sharp slowdown in housing construction. Economists say the challenge lies in finding ways to ensure sustainable, balanced growth while unwinding massive debt held by real estate developers, local governments and regional banks.

The gathering, held behind closed doors and without any formal public announcement Monday, will tackle such long-term reforms, Takehiko Nakao, former president of the Asian Development Bank, said in an interview with China’s CGTN network while attending an international financial conference in southern China’s Guangzhou. “Overall, the financial sector in China has made progress but at this moment they face challenges,” said Nakao. While longer-term reforms are likely on the agenda, he suggested that more immediate problems such as the real estate sector are a priority. The last financial work conference was held in 2017, but disruptions from the COVID caused it to be postponed in 2022.

The sudden death last week of former Premier Li Keqiang, an English-speaking economist who represented a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas, was seen by many observers to symbolise the shift toward stronger

party controls.

Li was sidelined in a leadership shakeup last year. Since then, Xi has conducted a thorough reshuffle of economic and financial leadership positions and set up an entity called the Central Financial Commission, seen as a move to coopt and weaken other regulators like the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Last week, Xi reportedly visited the central bank, or People’s Bank of China, a rare step that underscores the party’s consolidation of controls over markets and financial

institutions.