Jinny Yan, chief China economist at ICBC Standard Bank, London. |
President Xi Jinping's speech demonstrates China's maturity on the international stage since the first G20 Summit in Washington. Eight years ago, before the global financial crisis, China's GDP ranked third in the world and accounted for 7 percent of world GDP. This year, according to International Monetary Fund projections, it's the second-largest economy, with 15 percent of world GDP.
That said, with size comes responsibility. One focus of the speech was "a historic new start" for China - this symbolizes the end of easy catch-up growth, and the start of challenging structural reform and deeper market liberalization. However, the message here is that while China's growth will undoubtedly lift global growth, it can't do it single-handedly.
In his vision for the world economy, Xi kept closely to a theme of innovation to boost global productivity, invigoration to encourage new impetus and ignite domestic structural reforms, interconnectivity to remind global leaders that domestic policies may result in global consequences, and inclusive to address the issue of rising inequality.