China must “deepen reforms” to ensure “high standards” of self-sufficiency and economic independence, President Xi Jinping has told a high-level committee ahead of the country’s biggest legislative meeting of the year. The country’s leadership has indicated its economic strategy will increasingly focus on technological innovation and domestic demand amid its deepening competition with the US, a message reinforced by Xi’s comments to the central committee for deepening overall reform on Friday. China is currently waiting to see if the new US administration will open the way for warmer relations. But on Friday Joe Biden said in one of his first foreign policy speeches as president that the EU and US must prepare for “long-term strategic competition with China” . Xi did not mention the US directly in his comments, made two weeks before the annual government work report will be released at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress. US and China on path to ‘inevitable’ economic decoupling: report Analysts expect the leadership to use the event to provide further details of the country’s “new development model”, covering both the new five-year plan and a longer-term strategy for 2035. A report released by state news agency Xinhua after Friday’s meeting said the committee had been told that China should take advantage of nationwide support, remove institutional barriers that restrict the improvement of core science and technology, speed up research into key technologies, and “firmly grasp the initiatives of innovation and development”. Measures will be introduced to strengthen the protection of property rights and intellectual property rights, promote upgrades to the industrial and supply chains, establish a modern logistics system and build a unified national market. US, EU must prepare for ‘long-term strategic competition with China’: Biden The meeting also called for more efforts to expand domestic demand, integrate urban-rural development, speed up an internationalised business environment and facilitate the establishment of an open economy at a higher level. Xi, who promised the United Nations that China would become carbon neutral by 2060, also stressed efforts to promote environmental policies, including reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030. The emphasis on the environment, domestic demand and innovation was described as a “beautiful vision” by Chen Daoyin, an independent political analyst and former professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. “The success of these endeavours will be a source of confidence for China to lead the world in the changed international economic and political landscape in the future,” Chen said. “However, it remains unclear whether they will succeed although China vows to marshal full resources of the country. There have been examples of failures – from the Great Leap Forward’s national campaign to boost industrial output about six decades ago to the frenzy in recent years of building up semiconductor abilities that wasted money,” he said. Biden to put focus on China, pandemic and economic recovery at G7 talks Wei Shaojun, a professor with Tsinghua University’s Institute of Microelectronics said China should respect market rules in the semiconductor sector, rather than relying on administrative interventions. “What we lack is high-end chip production capacity. However, in recent years local governments have attracted investments to build up low-end capacity, many of which resulted in business closures,” Wei said, “We should be wary of such blindness.”