Promoting High-Quality Economic Development

The last chapter of the book, comprising five articles, is entitled “Promoting High-quality Economic Development”. A key factor in economic development is investment. In the context of China’s current system, we should focus on investment listed in the central government budget. The scale, structure and change of investment not only have a profound impact on the Chinese economy, but also shows the direction of macroeconomic regulation. As the Chinese economy shifts from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development, the investment listed in the central government budget, designed in the stage of high-speed growth in response to the crisis, has shown deficiencies in many aspects. According to the requirements of high-quality development, it is undoubtedly necessary to make strategic adjustments in such aspects as specifying the areas of investment, returning to regular budget management, appropriately reducing the scale of investment, and actively preventing local debt risks. The article “Central Government Budgetary Investment Towards High-quality Development” is based on the Third-party Performance Evaluation Report on the Central Government’s Investment in Capital Construction, a research project I led and entrusted by the Ministry of Finance in 2017.