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China maps out plan to raise incomes and boost consumption

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China will take steps to revive consumption by boosting people’s incomes, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, as part of a plan that adds to recent pledges by the government to support demand in an economy threatened by Donald Trump’s tariffs. 

The guidelines that came from a State Council report set out other measures such stabilizing the stock and real estate markets, and offering incentives to raise the country’s birth rate. Investors await further clues from top officials during a press conference set to be held 3 p.m. Monday on steps to boost consumption.

Policymakers in China increasingly recognize that a broad recovery in incomes is necessary to encourage people to boost spending. At parliamentary meetings this month, the country’s leadership made boosting consumption the top priority of the annual work report for the first time since President Xi Jinping came to power over a decade ago. 

“Households can’t spend what they don’t have,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank. “While there are few new details on how the government will increase spending, the details of the plan show a greater determination to tackle China’s consumption problem this year.”

The latest effort, which covers eight areas, outlines plans to improve childcare and includes a pledge to enforce China’s paid leave system. Local governments have already started to increase support for social wellbeing, with Hohhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, announcing new childcare subsidies. 

Ambitious goal

The program made public on Sunday elaborates on some of the measures announced by Premier Li Qiang earlier this month when he delivered the government’s annual work report to the national parliament in Beijing. China has set an ambitious economic growth goal at about 5% for 2025 and brought its fiscal deficit target to the highest in over three decades.

Lifting consumer spending is key to countering US policies that are upending global trade and causing a slowdown of Chinese exports, which contributed to nearly a third of the country’s economic expansion in 2024. At the same time, China is still grappling with a prolonged property slump that has suppressed demand and kept prices low throughout the economy while wages stagnate. 

Reviving consumption has been a challenge for the government since the end of the pandemic. Retail sales have been anemic while consumer prices fell into deflation in February for the first time in over a year.

Beijing will promote “reasonable growth” in wages and establish a sound mechanism for adjusting the minimum wage, Xinhua reported. It will also look at setting up a childcare subsidy system, as well as strengthening how investment can support consumption. 

“Compared to previous plans focused solely on supply-side improvements or old-for-new policies, the plan also touches on the need to improve income,” Jefferies analysts including Anne Ling wrote in a note. “We believe the government is placing more focus on securing the welfare of lower-income groups.”

Chinese stocks rallied the most in two months on Friday after the State Council, China’s cabinet, announced that officials from the finance ministry, the central bank and other government departments plan to discuss measures to boost consumption on Monday.

“With a few measures taking place such as trade-in extensions and maternity support by some cities, the guidelines could be read positively by the market amid the current rally,” Morgan Stanley analysts including Lillian Lou wrote in a note.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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North Carolina GOP House member hit with jeers, boos and pointed questions from voters in visit home: ‘Do your job’

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In two congressional districts and vastly different political environments, two Republicans in the U.S. House were met with far different reactions at public meetings they held late last week.

Against the suggestion of their leader, House Speaker Mike Johnson, to refrain from holding public meetings with constituents, second-term Reps. Chuck Edwards and Harriet Hageman went ahead with their evening sessions.

In Asheville, North Carolina, chants of opposition greeted Edwards on Thursday as opponents hooted at almost every answer he gave and chanted outside. In Evanston, Wyoming, at the southwestern corner of a sparsely populated and heavily Republican state, it was mostly Republicans who asked probing questions of Hageman in a quieter setting.

In both cases, voters were curious about the scope and pace of action in Washington since President Donald Trump took office, if less boisterously in Wyoming than the event 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) to the southeast.

Evanston, Wyoming

Joy Walton, a 76-year-old Republican from Evanston, had come to the meeting confused about tech billionaire Elon Musk’s role in the executive branch. Trump has charged Musk with leading a broad effort to shrink the size and cost of government.

Hageman — Liz Cheney ’s successor — worked to clarify Musk’s place in the Trump administration, describing him as “a special government employee” with “a top-secret security clearance.” She praised him for his work targeting foreign aid contracts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, calling the department a “monstrosity and waste of money.”

The meeting was tamer than some constituent meetings held by Republicans, who hold majorities in the House and the Senate. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, adjourned such a meeting this month in northwest Kansas early when constituents became vocally angry about government personnel cuts.

Still, Hageman’s meeting Friday, with about 250 filling to capacity the meeting room in the restored Union Pacific Railroad roundhouse, was the liveliest event that evening in the train depot town of about 11,800 people.

Some in the audience blurted comments to Hageman, though this was not unfriendly territory for Trump. The president received 80% of the vote in Uinta County, along the Utah border, en route to carrying Wyoming with nearly 72% of voters last year.

Yet even some devout Republicans gave voice to concern about Musk’s recommendations as the head of the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Former Wyoming Secretary of State Karl Allred, 60, said he was happy to see Trump slash “wasteful spending,” but noted that any serious reduction in federal spending needed to include the defense budget. “I guarantee we waste a lot of money there, and in every department,” Allred said regarding the military.

Even Hageman suggested Musk was going too far in targeting the U.S. Postal Service, which has agreed to assist Musk’s group in its plan to cut 10,000 of the service’s 640,000 workers over the next month. Wyoming would be among the states hit hardest by cuts to the country’s mail service because of its small population, Hageman said.

Asheville, North Carolina

Edwards was walking into a far different environment. Asheville, a mid-sized urban hub surrounded by the rural hills of western North Carolina, is the seat of Buncombe County, where Trump received 36.9% of the vote last year.

Jay Carey, a 54-year-old Democrat, had said before the Thursday night constituent meeting at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, “My plan is to call him out.”

About 20 minutes into Edwards’ meeting, Carey, a retired military veteran, started to yell at the representative to “Do your job.” Carey then stood, accused Edwards of lying and used a string of expletives until police escorted him out of the auditorium.

For about 90 minutes, Edwards faced jeers, boos and pointed questions from many in the audience of 300, while another 1,000 echoed them from outside the building.

Certainly, Carey, from the Asheville area, was part of a group of Democrats who attended the meeting, though not paid protesters as Johnson suggested were behind some of the more raucous gatherings.

Carey’s home flooded with six feet of water during Hurricane Helene in September. He lost his small business and his family had to relocate from a house to a smaller apartment.

Much of Edwards’ district was ravaged by the hurricane and remains in the early rebuilding phase, even as Trump has suggested eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Edwards seemed unruffled by the often hostile reception, telling reporters afterward, “I appreciate the chance to talk about those things, even though there were some differences and some different opinions.”

Still, as protesters continued to chant outside, Edwards said, “We’re doing exactly what the American people sent us to Washington, D.C., to do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Emmanuel Macron says pressure must be placed on Russia to accept ceasefire or else ‘Trump will toughen sanctions and retaliation’

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French President Emmanuel Macron said Saturday that Europe and the United States had to put pressure on Russia to accept a proposed ceasefire in Ukraine.

Russia “does not give the impression it sincerely wants peace,” Macron said in a statement provided to AFP following a Saturday morning video conference of countries backing Ukraine organised by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

On the contrary, Russian President Vladimir Putin is “escalating the fighting” and “wants to get everything, then negotiate,” he said.

“Russia must respond clearly and the pressure must be clear, in conjunction with the United States, to obtain this ceasefire,” he added.

In a statement released later Saturday, his office said Macron would Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney on Monday to discuss the war in Ukraine and “other international crises”.

Since returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump has stressed his desire to end the three-year-old conflict, and has made a spectacular rapprochement with Vladimir Putin.

After a very public falling out between Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last month, Kyiv has worked to restore relations. It has backed Washington’s proposed a 30-day ceasefire, which Russia has not accepted.

‘Moment of truth’

“This is a moment of truth because if Russia does not sincerely commit to peace, President Trump will toughen sanctions and retaliation, and so that will completely change the dynamic,” Macron said in an interview Friday with French regional papers that was posted late Saturday.

He said planning was accelerating among countries willing to provide security guarantees for Ukraine following any eventual ceasefire, such as France and Britain.

Military leaders from some 30 countries met in Paris on March 11 to discuss plans for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, and will meet again Thursday in Britain.

“Several European countries, and indeed non-European ones, have expressed their willingness to join” a possible deployment to Ukraine to secure a future peace agreement with Russia, said Macron.

This would involve “a few thousand troops” per state, deployed at key points, to conduct training programmes and “show our long-term support”, he told the regional papers.

Moscow has firmly opposed such a deployment.

But Macron said: “If Ukraine requests allied forces to be on its territory, it is not up to Russia to accept or reject them.

He added: “Under no circumstances can the Ukrainians make territorial concessions without having any security guarantees.”

Macron will travel to Berlin Tuesday for talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz for talks on Ukraine ahead of an EU summit, Berlin has announced.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com



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Exclusive: Inside Pillar VC’s $175 million fourth venture fund focused on the Boston tech ecosystem

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