China’s new Five-Year Plan emphasizes the quality of growth rather than speed as the country enters a period of ‘new normal’. Maintaining 6.5 percent of economic growth is a priority, but it is even more important to keep such a growth rate sustainable and to channel that growth toward improving the quality of life for the majority of Chinese citizens.

The Chinese premier’s frankness in his report embodied not only decision-makers’ policy orientations, but also a profound people-first mentality that will be of far-reaching significance.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the growth track and pattern of the world economy have undergone dramatic changes, and maintaining an easy monetary policy by the central banks will not be enough to remedy the situation. New “supply substitution” is needed to improve the productivity and innovative output of all factors, and to earnestly promote global economic growth.

As it acts upon the 13th Five Year Plan, Beijing must combine government fiscal investment, corporate R&D, industrial investment, venture capital, bank credit investment, capital market financing, science funding and more, to make a financial system with a full range of support to update China’s economy. An efficiently operating system will be key to the nation’s future competitiveness.

Since the announcement of the new policy, Chinese feminists have been concerned that women aren’t really given full freedom to choose whether to have a second child – or any child at all – due to cultural and public policy reasons.

China’s goal of achieving “Xiao Kang” — or “moderately prosperous society” by 2020 aims to make sure that the remaining families still in poverty also step into the well-off society together with the rest of the nation. The author argues that outside world tends to look at China as if it is another traditional power and thus loses sight of what is really going on inside China. With poverty alleviation a continuing top priority, the uppermost imperative is for China to have a stable external environment so that it can attend to its own monumental challenges.

As the labor supply declines and labor cost increases, China must strengthen the supply front to really create new supply and efficiency dividends through reform. Reform on the supply front requires the improvement of capital-formation efficiency for the next five years.

The International Monetary Fund’s recent decision to add the Chinese renminbi to the basket of currencies that determine the value of its reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right, has captured headlines around the world. But the SDR itself has not exactly dominated discussions – much less transactions – since its creation in 1969. So does the decision really matter?

Since the 1990’s, Sam Pa subsequently amassed a huge fortune by helping shady African autocrats sell their petroleum and minerals to China. Sam Pa was most of all a source of “rents” for several dozen corrupt politicians and officials in the resource-rich areas of Africa. However, Sam Pa’s arrest last month has put an end to his corruption.

Fluctuations in China’s currency and economy don’t have the wild effect on the global markets that many critics allege, and such accusations distract from a needed collective focus on maintaining stability.