Major challenges in store as key meetings approach

Issues to be discussed at the annual sessions of the national legislature and top political advisory body are the most complicated and challenging in more than a decade, according to observers.

National People's Congress lawmakers and members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee will attend the meetings in Beijing starting on Tuesday.

Policy watchers said they expect China's leaders to come up with more clear-cut strategies to guarantee economic growth, provide more opportunities for society, and to facilitate reform.

Wang Ruifang, an economist at Nanjing University, said the nation will abandon the blind pursuit of GDP growth, but will adopt a serious approach to achieving a planned minimum level of GDP expansion.

Although this growth will not be as rapid as in the early stages of the country's development, maintaining a certain speed will still require some effort, Wang said.

Zhao Zhenhua, an economist at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that to achieve required growth, the country will continue to look to government-led investment projects, will help small companies with tax incentives, and support industrial innovation.

Liu Ligang, chief China economist at Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, is expecting an interest-rate cut in March, following the central bank's decision to lower banks' reserve requirement ratio in February.

Du Yang, a demography researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China must continue to raise industry's competitiveness to create up to 10 million new urban jobs annually.

Many researchers argued that legal and institutional changes will have to be made.

China International Capital Corp, a Chinese investment bank, said in a recent report that it expects the top legislature to make major revisions to the Securities Law, the Commercial Banks Law and the Law Against Unfair Competition, to further regulate government power and reduce business costs in China.