context: Publishing excerpts from Xi's address at the December 2025 Central Economic Work Conference just weeks before the March 2026 Two Sessions is a calculated move on the political calendar. Rather than introducing new initiatives, the text primarily serves to unify thinking across the Party apparatus. It signals to officials at all levels that upcoming Two Sessions proposals and local economic plans must adhere to the overarching framework established. Domestic demand is ranked first, with clearer emphasis on platform economy coordination. The focus is on policy certainty and enforcing priority over technical detail, while subtly recalibrating emphasis within that framework.
In Qiushi, the CCP’s flagship theoretical journal, Xi Jinping 习近平 outlined eight key tasks for 2026. Opening with the remark that economic work in 2026 involves 'many threads', Xi stresses the need to focus on key levers and establish clear priorities, including
- expanding domestic markets by linking consumption and investment
- implementing a targeted consumption boost and raising basic pensions
- increasing central budget investments and refining local government special bond usage to stimulate private capital
- cultivating new economic drivers through tech innovation
- fostering emerging industries like integrated circuits, aerospace and embodied AI
- deepening reform to build a unified national market and tackle involution
- supporting private enterprise growth
- resolving corporate arrears
- promoting coordinated development of platform enterprises and workers
- driving multi-sector cooperation via institutional opening up
- expanding cross-border e-commerce and attracting foreign reinvestment
- advancing coordinated urban-rural and regional development
- supporting major economic provinces to lead growth and advancing city clusters
- pushing a green transition under dual carbon goals
- building new energy networks and expanding green electricity use
- prioritising public livelihoods by securing employment for key demographics
- implementing childbirth support policies to stabilise the population
- defusing risks in real estate, local government debt and small financial institutions
- optimising debt restructuring and enforcing the real estate white list