On June 14, 2011, Ambassador Zhang Jun Attended 2011 Dutch-Jilin China Business Cooperation Forum and addressed the audience on the future development of China as well as Sino-Dutch cooperation, stressing that international community should be confident of China’s development.
In his speech, Ambassador Zhang pointed out that recently some foreign friends expressed their concerns about China’s development. They wonder after more than 3 decades of fast development, whether or not China’s development has entered a turning point, whether or not China will maintain a steady, rapid and healthy development, and continue to add momentum to world economic growth.
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Ambassador Zhang said due to international and domestic factors, economic and social development of China is now faced with challenges such as the imbalanced economic and social development, large income gap, high inflation and so on. But the concern that China’s development is about to end is groundless and unnecessary. Firstly, Chinese government is keenly aware of the long-term challenges it faced in the path of development. In order to maintain the momentum of economic growth, remain competitive, and achieve sustainable development, China strongly promotes economic restructuring, accelerates the transformation of economic development pattern, adjusts and optimizes the industrial structure, expands domestic demand, promotes technology innovation as well as conserves resource and protects the environment. Mr. John Lipsky, Acting Managing Director of IMF, recently said that China’s transforming of economic development pattern is vital to the world, and is helpful for the strong, sustainable and balanced global economic growth. Secondly, responding to high inflation expectation, Chinese government makes it top priority in macroeconomic control to keep overall price level stable. China implements prudent monetary policy, and adopts a series of effective measures in a timely manner, leading the situation to right direction. According to IMF estimation, China’s inflation will slow to around 4% by the end of this year, and economic growth will remain around 9.5%. Mr. Stephen Roach, American economist, also gave credit to measures taken by China. Thirdly, while promoting economic growth, Chinese government always attaches great important to improve people’s well-being, promote balanced development between rural and urban areas and between regions, keep economic development in line with social development, actively develop social security system, and spare no efforts to build a harmonious society. The guiding ideology of Twelfth Five-Year Plan is to make people happier, richer and enjoy a more balanced economic and social development. Stable political and social environment provides strong guarantee to China’s sustainable development.
Ambassador Zhang said that after more than 30 years of reforming and opening up, China has not only gained great achievements, maintained the ability of sustainable development, but also accumulated experiences to stand against all kinds of challenges and risks. Together with firm belief and determination of the national people, China is capable of moving forward on the path of development in accordance with its national situation. In this context, there are broad prospects for Sino-Dutch economic and trade relations, and China’s development will continue to bring new opportunity to the development of the Netherlands and the world.
Mr. Wang Rulin, Governor of Jilin province of China, Mr. Bernard Wientjes, Chairman of VNO-NCW, Ms. Marije Hulshof, Director of Agentschap NL, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Mr. Henk Kool, Vice Mayor of The Hague, Mr. Jochum Haakma, Chairman of NCH and other representatives from business community also attended the forum.
