Can China jumpstart its economy amid Western tech sanctions? | DW News

The National People's Congress is underway in Beijing. Headlining the meeting is China's offical economic growth target. Beijing has set a goal of around 5 percent for 2023, as the government seeks to jumpstart the world's second largest economy after restrictive anti-COVID measures took a toll on growth. But the five percent figure is considered conservative by analysts. China is faced with a growing array of challenges, including sluggish consumption, rising unemployment, a historic downturn in real estate and increasing tensions with the West over technology sanctions.
China is locked in a race with the West for technological dominance. The country was already struggling with a lack of advanced chips and the machines needed to build them, and has vowed to use all the resources at the state's disposal. Now it's behind in the software race too, as artificial intelligence software like GPT and Bard begin to spread across the world. Chinese search giant Baidu says it's almost ready to launch its AI bot called Ernie, as soon as this month. But it's worth noting that the head of Baidu and his fellow internet executives from the likes of Tencent and others appeared to be absent at the National People's Congress in Beijing.