Conditions underpinning China's long-term growth remain unchanged: spokesperson

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- The conditions underpinning China's long-term growth and underlying trend remain unchanged, despite the difficulties and challenges it faces, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

Spokesperson Mao Ning made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to a reporter's question about China's GDP growth target this year.

When delivering the report on the work of the government on Thursday, Premier Li Qiang took stock of what China has achieved during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. Gross domestic product (GDP) has taken a new leap, Mao said.

Noting that these remarkable achievements have been made in a grave and complex landscape, where external shocks and challenges were intertwined with domestic difficulties and tough policy choices, Mao said that this says a lot about the great resilience and vigor of China's economy.

"Looking forward, as Premier Li Qiang pointed out, we're clearly-eyed about the difficulties and challenges we face. Yet, the conditions underpinning China's long-term growth and underlying trend remain unchanged. More and more, China is demonstrating the strengths of its system and the strengths it has as a big country," said Mao.

"As long as we fully tap our strengths and respond to challenges in the right way, we will surely open up even more promising prospects for China's development," Mao said.

"We will fully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts, move faster to foster a new pattern of development, and promote high-quality development," said Mao.

She also said that China will promote higher-quality economic growth while achieving an appropriate increase in economic output, adding that China will further expand high-standard opening up, stick to mutually beneficial cooperation, steadily advance institutional opening-up, and engage at a higher level in the global economy so that more people worldwide will benefit from China's development.

The strategic focus, policy outcomes, vitality of development, and capacity for governance demonstrated in China's economic growth will provide much needed stability and certainty to a turbulent world, she said. ■