PRC targets 5% growth despite trade war with U.S.

Plus, Liu Jiakun wins 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly China brief.

I hope you’ve had a great week.

The Two Sessions kicked off this week with a series of government announcements: a 2025 GDP growth target of “around 5%,” which many economists view as highly ambitious, an increase in the government budget deficit from 3% to 4% of GDP, an inflation target of 2%—the lowest in over 20 years, down from the previous 3%—and a 7.2% rise in defense spending.

As new U.S. tariffs on PRC imports took effect on Tuesday, Beijing announced retaliatory tariffs of up to 15% on key U.S. food and agricultural imports, effective March 10, along with additional countermeasures.

On the same day, responding to a related question from The New York Times, foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian remarked that “intimidation does not scare us.” He then warned, “if war is what the U.S. wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we’re ready to fight till the end.”

On Friday, on the sidelines of th…