BEIJING – “Isn’t it now time for China to abandon the concept of a growth target?”
That was the question I asked Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei this week at the 15th annual China Development Forum, which brings together top Chinese officials and an international delegation of academics, leaders of multilateral organizations, and business executives. Having attended the CDF since former Premier Zhu Rongji initiated it in 2000, I can attest to its role as one of China’s most important platforms for debate. Zhu welcomed the exchange of views at the Forum as a true intellectual test for China’s reformers.
It was in that spirit that I posed my question to Lou, whom I have known since the late 1990’s. In that period, he has been Deputy Minister of Finance, founding Chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation, and now Minister of Finance. I have always found him to be direct, intellectually curious, a first-rate analytical thinker, and a forward-looking advocate of market-based reforms. He is cut from the same cloth as his mentor, Zhu.
My question was set in the context of the new thrust of Chinese reforms announced at last November’s Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, which emphasized the “decisive role” of market forces in shaping the next phase of China’s economic development.
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