Mysteel Global: China’s State Council meeting on April 18 had studied a series of measures aimed at stabilizing employment and the economy and promoting high-quality development, which are a continuation of the incremental policy package last September and the tasks set out at the Central Economic Work Conference and the top political meetings ‘Two Sessions,’ said Zhao Chenxin, Vice Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the state planner, at a press conference on Monday.The measures will be introduced as soon as each measure matures, Zhao said.
Zhao outlined five key areas of focus:
Supporting employment, including encouraging companies to stabilize employment, strengthening vocational skills training, expanding employment through public works programs, and enhancing public employment services;
Stabilizing foreign trade, through sector-specific and enterprise-specific support, helping export firms manage risks, expanding exports of service products, and encouraging foreign-invested enterprises to reinvest domestically;
Promoting consumption, including expanding service consumption, strengthening care services for disabled elderly populations, boosting automobile consumption, and building skills-oriented compensation systems;
Expanding effective investment, including improving consumption-related infrastructure, boosting private investment enthusiasm, and establishing new types of policy-based financial instruments;
Creating a stable and favorable environment for development, including maintaining a stable and active capital market, consolidating the stabilization of the real estate market, and increasing financial support for the real economy.
Going forward, China will establish a normalized, open-ended system for pre-researching and reserving policies, ensuring ample contingency plans and refining the policy toolbox for stabilizing employment and the economy, and new policies will be rolled out promptly in response to changing circumstances, he said.
The U.S. tariff war is having the most immediate and significant impact on China’s foreign trade enterprises and poses the greatest short-term uncertainty for China’s economic performance, and based on big data monitoring and forecasts, exports have maintained a generally stable growth trend since April, said Sheng Qiuping, Vice Minister of Commerce, at the press conference.
To help foreign trade enterprises proactively address external risks and challenges, the Chinese government will focus on meeting the needs of businesses, promptly solving problems, enriching the foreign trade policy toolbox, and introducing new incremental measures when appropriate, said Sheng.
Regarding reforms to better integrate domestic and international trade, Sheng said that for enterprises heavily impacted by tariffs, the government will strengthen the support in four areas: market expansion, domestic consumption, fiscal and financial backing, and service guarantees.
He also mentioned the “three increases and three reductions” strategy:
Three increases: increasing fiscal funding from the government, increasing credit support from financial institutions, and expanding domestic trade insurance support from insurers;
Three reductions: reducing or waiving housing rents, exhibition booth fees, and traffic-related fees for struggling enterprises to lower the costs of selling to the domestic market.
While accelerating the rollout of measures to stabilize employment and the economy, Zhao Chenxin also said that efforts will be stepped up to ensure that existing policies are effectively implemented, including promoting special actions to boost consumption, utilizing the Yuan 5 trillion ($687 billion) of national-level investment funds allocated for 2025, and speeding up the establishment of a national venture capital guidance fund.
Most of these policies are expected to take effect in the second quarter, with a focus on strengthening policy consistency, he said.
Since 2024, major initiatives like large-scale equipment renewal and consumer goods trade-in, along with the implementation of national strategies and the construction of key security capacities, have become critical levers for expanding domestic demand, and the scope and funding for these efforts are also expanding.
Zhao noted that the second batch of funds for consumer goods trade-in in 2025 has recently been allocated, bringing the total for the first two batches to over Yuan 160 billion, with around Yuan 140 billion still to be distributed depending on regional disbursement progress.
On the investment front, industrial software upgrades will be included under the “two renewals” policy umbrella, there will be accelerated investment in consumption-related infrastructure and social sectors, a campaign to double charging infrastructure will be launched, and support will be provided for cities with a permanent population of over 3 million — especially mega-cities and super-large cities — to build more parking spaces, he said.
The government aims to finalize the entire project list for this year’s priority projects and central budget investment by the end of June, and new types of policy-based financial instruments will also be introduced to address funding shortages in project construction, said Zhao.
In addition, a national child-rearing subsidy system will be established, a dedicated re-lending tool will be created to support key areas of service consumption and elderly care industries, and the special campaign to boost consumption will be deepened with sector-specific policies to be issued promptly, Zhao said.
Authorities will also guide cities with car purchase restrictions to issue targeted increases in car quotas for long-term applicants and families without cars.
Note: This article has been written in accordance with a content exchange agreement between MySteel Global and BigMint.
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