Pledges on government spending and monetary support come as data points to slowing growth
4 min
Chinese leaders vowed to increase government spending and monetary support for the economy at an annual gathering, signalling they plan to stick with a measured approach to stimulus despite calls for bolder action.
The Central Economic Work Conference, which ended Tuesday, capped a bruising year for the country’s economy, which has struggled with a drawn-out housing crunch and weak consumption.
The trouble shows no sign of abating. After a pickup in the third quarter, data in recent weeks has pointed to slowing growth again as exports struggle, activity in the services sector slows and deflation deepens.
Still, Chinese leaders offered few specifics Tuesday on how they intend to reignite consumer and business confidence and reinvigorate growth.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping presided over the two-day meeting, where leaders urged officials to increase fiscal stimulus and help expand domestic demand, according to Chinese state media. They also acknowledged economic challenges, including “excess capacity in certain industries and weak sentiment in the society,” according to a readout of the meeting.
Chinese leaders also called for strengthening the resilience of industrial supply chains and accelerating the development of artificial intelligence, as well as other strategic industries such as aerospace and biotechnology.
The closed-door meeting, which is typically held in December each year to map out plans for economic policy-making, sets out the leadership’s growth ambitions for the following year, though the detailed targets won’t be released until March, during the National People’s Congress.
Though the overall tone of the conference was pro-growth, “it is still not a call for massive stimulus,” economists at Société Générale said in a note to clients after the readout was published. Instead, officials are emphasising the need to stabilise the economy and stem risks to growth, they said.
Many economists expect Beijing to anchor its growth target at around 5% in 2024, taking their cue from a meeting last week of the Communist Party’s Politburo, its body of top leaders. Policy makers emphasised the importance of economic progress, saying the country needed to “pursue stability through growth.”
This year’s target was also set at around 5%. Despite its difficulties, the economy looks set to hit that goal this year, but economists say maintaining that pace will be tough without bigger measures to stimulate the economy.
Beijing has taken some measures this year including interest rate cuts and channeling cheaper loans to firms to arrest the downturn but has so far failed to reverse a broad-based loss of confidence.
China’s difficult year contrasts with surprising resilience in the U.S., where buoyant consumer and government spending have kept the economy motoring despite aggressive increases in interest rates by the Federal Reserve. The latest data on jobs and inflation has stoked optimism that the U.S. will avoid recession and instead enjoy a “soft landing,” in which price growth slows to target without a steep rise in unemployment. That marks a reversal in expectations from earlier in the year when China was expected to easily outpace a cooling U.S. economy.
And there are fresh signs of trouble for China.
Business surveys showed factory activity slid deeper into contraction in November as domestic and foreign orders dried up, while activity in the services sector shrank for the first time this year as consumers cut back spending.
Exports rose just 0.5% on the year last month after shrinking for six months, highlighting the drag from slowing growth in the U.S. and Europe.
Weak domestic spending and bloated industrial capacity caused consumer prices in China to fall in November for the second straight month, deepening a bout of deflation that economists say could prove hard to shake if the economy doesn’t pick up soon.
China’s slow-motion property crunch shows few signs of abating. Some developers have defaulted on their debts and construction has stalled on millions of homes. Home prices fell in October and new investment in the sector is shrinking.
A central question for investors and economists is whether Beijing will experiment with novel stimulus approaches to shore up battered confidence among households and businesses.
At the meeting, Chinese leaders vowed to expand consumption and raise income for both urban and rural residents but offered little sign that they may pivot to giving cash handouts to households, despite repeated calls from policy advisers and economists to do so.
Instead, the government is seen as more likely to step up efforts to resolve the crisis in the property market, which remains a major drag on overall growth.
Chinese leaders called for equal treatment for developers to meet their financing needs—a likely reference to the perception that banks favour state-backed developers over private ones. They also urged accelerating the construction of government-subsidised affordable housing and urban village renovation projects.
Still, the meeting didn’t spell out a plan to help cash-strapped developers finish tens of millions of uncompleted apartments, a crucial step that economists believe will help restore household’s confidence in the government.
While officials aren’t expected to disclose a growth target until a political gathering next spring, economists and investors are already debating how aggressive Beijing will be with its 2024 goal.
Economists from J.P. Morgan predicted that policy makers will likely maintain a goal of around 5%, to signal a renewed focus on the economy. Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley, said he expects Beijing to set a target of 4.5% to 5% and pursue a stronger fiscal stimulus.
Others believe Beijing will stick to a more conservative target because of the headwinds facing the economy. Ting Lu, chief China economist at Nomura, said he expects China to aim for around 4.5%.
“I still think the Chinese government is quite rational,” said Lu, who cautioned that the economy hasn’t bottomed out and the actual growth rate could slip to 4% in 2024 from Nomura’s 5.2% forecast for 2023.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
3 min
Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
