Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei sat down with The Wall Street Journal in Washington on the sidelines of a Group of 20 gathering of finance chiefs that he co-chaired. In his first interview with a foreign news outlet in four years, Mr. Lou offered his views on China’s reform efforts, the economic relationship between China and the U.S., and comments about China from GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump. Here are excerpts of the conversation.
Q: What does China hope to accomplish by hosting this year’s G-20 summit?
A: The global economy is gradually recovering, but the recovery has been very uneven. For G-20 countries, the initial focus was on using monetary policy to buy time. But buy time for what? It’s buying time for reform to gain traction. At the same time, fiscal policy was also focused on short-term stimulus. Now, we think that given the current circumstance, we need to ensure we have a stronger and more enhanced agenda for structural reform. We need to combine monetary and fiscal policies with structural-reform policies. During China’s G-20 presidency, the G-20 will focus on both short-term and long-term growth, aiming to build an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy. We’re doing our best to make G-20 members more motivated and also more pressured to press ahead with structural reform. We’re developing the priority areas for structural reform, guiding principles for structural reform as well as quantitative indicators that measure the progress with structural reform.
