China’s Xi calls for building unified market to ‘secure an edge’ in global race

President Xi Jinping has called for more efforts to develop a unified domestic market, arguing that it will be crucial to helping China secure an edge in international competition and meet its development goals.

In an article published on Monday in Qiushi, the ruling Communist Party’s leading theoretical journal, the Chinese leader listed six key tasks, with measures to deal with excessive cutthroat competition at the forefront.

Vicious price wars have broken out in several industries in recent months as companies struggle to deal with persistent overcapacity and sluggish demand, exacerbating deflationary pressure on the Chinese economy.

“Industry associations should guide companies to improve product quality, favour quality over price, and oppose low-quality products,” Xi said.

“Outdated production capacity should be phased out in an orderly manner, and policies should address the ‘involution’ issue in both online and offline businesses.”

The article was an excerpt of Xi’s speech at a meeting of China’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in July, during which officials called for a crackdown on excessive price competition between firms and a phasing out of obsolete industrial capacity.