BOAO, Hainan - China’s economic growth will inject strong impetus for the recovery of the global economy and provide more opportunities for its Asian neighbours, said the country’s top legislator Zhao Leji on March 28.

China will persist in its opening up and push for high-quality, innovative and green development, Mr Zhao – the Communist Party’s third-ranked official – said at the opening plenary of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference.

“Opening up is the distinctive mark of contemporary China. China’s door to opening up will only get wider and will never be closed,” added Mr Zhao, who heads China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress.

He is the latest Chinese leader in the past week to have struck such encouraging tones as foreign direct investment in China fell to a 30-year low in 2023 amid geopolitical tensions and a tougher regulatory environment in the world’s second-largest economy.

China is also facing mounting debt, weak consumer confidence and other headwinds as it strives to meet a growth target of around 5 per cent for 2024.

On March 24, Chinese Premier Li Qiang sought to reassure foreign investors about the country’s property market slump and high local government debt at the China Development Forum in Beijing. On March 27, President Xi Jinping met American chief executives and scholars at the Great Hall of the People and told them that China is working to improve its business environment.

The outlook for the Chinese economy was a key topic of discussion at the four-day forum in the island province of Hainan that gathered 2,000 business leaders, government officials and academics from more than 60 countries and regions.

Speaking at a panel discussion, Mr Steven Alan Barnett, the International Monetary Fund’s senior resident representative in China, said that strong, sustainable growth in the country is good for China and for the world economy.

Noting that the nation accounted for about a third of global growth in 2023, he said: “That’s just the direct impact. If we look at the indirect impact, our research also shows that for every 1 percentage point faster China grows, that raises on average the level of GDP (gross domestic product) in other economies in the medium term by about 0.3 per cent.”

Speaking at the same panel on China’s economic outlook, Mr Albert Park, chief economist at the Asian Development Bank, described the 5 per cent target as “in a realistic range”, although the bank’s projection was slightly below that at 4.5 per cent.

He said a decline in investment and prices in the property sector was still a significant downside, as was low consumer confidence, with Chinese tourists still not returning to the region in large numbers.

Asked by The Straits Times how foreign investors would read Mr Zhao’s renewed call for economic development, Mr Benjamin Simpfendorfer, partner at management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, said they are more optimistic than they were a year ago.

“There is a recognition that in spite of tensions, China is still open to foreign companies and is working to attract more of them,” he noted.

Investors also recognise that China’s scale cannot be replicated anywhere else – “there is no next China” – and that it is still a “slowing but big growth opportunity”.

“But equally, foreign companies recognise that China is an innovation powerhouse in a range of sectors. In order to participate in (those sectors) globally, you need a presence here in China, and to be going global with China’s partners. So there is a growing recognition that China is still central to the global economy and global business,” he said.

Recent tensions over the South China Sea were another hot topic at the Boao forum on March 28. Panellists from China, Indonesia, Vietnam and the United States largely agreed that the current situation posed a serious risk to regional stability.

Tensions have run high in the past year as China and the Philippines have clashed on numerous occasions near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, or Renai Jiao to the Chinese. The latest incident took place on March 23, in which Manila said China’s Coast Guard fired water cannon at one of its supply boats.

The Philippines says the shoal lies within its exclusive economic zone, but China insists that it has sovereignty over the Spratly Islands, of which the shoal is a part.

Asserting that Renai Jiao is China’s territory, Mr Yang Renhuo of China’s Foreign Ministry said at the forum that the reason for the current tense situation is provocations from the Philippines.

He defended China’s “necessary law enforcement measures” as “legitimate, legal, professional and restrained”.

He also accused “outsiders” of trespassing in the waters under the banner of freedom of navigation exercises, a veiled reference to the US.

Mr Yang, who is deputy director-general of the Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs, said China has always believed that dialogue and cooperation are key to maintaining peace and stability in the resource-rich waters.

Fellow panellist Dino Patti Djalal, former deputy foreign minister of Indonesia, called for all claimant states to exercise self-restraint, noting that there will always be temptation for parties to strengthen their presence and substantiate claims before a code of conduct is finalised. Several other Asean countries and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

Said Mr Dino: “If you want stability, cooperation, trust and confidence, all claimants need to avoid actions that will provoke responses from the other claimants. This is important because once an incident starts between two or more claimants, there is really no mechanism to stop it.”