mk opening meeting of the third session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2025. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2025/2025-03-05/e44b8cec-41b6-4c4a-8357-aeb44a77c555.jpeg" />The opening meeting of the third session of the 14th National People's Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 5, 2025. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)
People have noticed that many new terms and buzzwords have emerged during this year's two sessions. Terms such as "funds and resources used to serve the people," "embodied AI," "gazelle companies," "zero-base budgeting," "comprehensive statistics system for consumption," "'sci-tech board' in bond market" are rich in contemporary significance and vividly reflect China's exploration of new development paths in the fields of government finance, banking, science and technology, economy, and people's livelihood. They reveal the deep logic of China's economic transformation and upgrading, display the vigorous vitality of Chinese modernization, and also showcase the trends and code of China's high-quality development in the future.
It is not surprising that these new words and buzzwords have attracted widespread attention from the outside world. This is because they are full of vitality, with strong realistic relevance. They are not only new words stemming from the "two sessions," but also new terms for China's high-quality development. These new words and buzzwords have at least three focuses, namely, the new quality productive forces represented by high-tech industries, the people-centered development philosophy and the precise implementation of macroeconomic control policies. Together, they constitute an epitome of China's development path.
As President Xi Jinping emphasized at the deliberation with the deputies from the delegation of Jiangsu Province during the third session of the 14th National People's Congress, sci-tech and industrial innovation is the fundamental pathway for the development of new quality productive forces. New words from the two sessions in technological sector such as "embodied AI" and 6G reflect China's embrace of the new era of advanced technologies and its determination to accelerate industrial upgrades through technological iteration. Just over a month after DeepSeek AI released its open-source reasoning model DeepSeek-R1, the phrase "we will support the extensive application of large-scale AI models" was included in the government work report, signaling China's proactive approach to seizing the historic opportunity presented by the integration of Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence.
This year's government work report introduced several key policies for the first time, including supporting the development of unicorn and gazelle companies, enabling more enterprises to surge ahead in new areas and arenas. Additionally, terms such as "the growth of patient capital" and "encouraging exploration and tolerating failure" were included, clearly signaling the government's commitment to fostering new quality productive forces. These initiatives create a supportive and nurturing environment for innovative enterprises, providing fertile ground for sustained technological and industrial advancement.
In China, ensuring a happy life for the people is a top priority. The government work report proposes that more funds and resources will be used to serve the people and meet their needs, and developing a skills-based pay system to ensure better pay for those with a commitment to hard work, an outstanding skill set, and a dedication to innovation. This approach will stimulate individual motivation and creativity. "Childcare subsidies" are in tandem with integrated nursery and childcare services and public-interest childcare services. Preschool education works with vocational education and general education as well as collaboration between industries and schools, providing students with more equitable and comprehensive high-quality education. As the government's "purse" will spend more on people's livelihood and deeply integrates the improvement of people's livelihood with economic development, people see that a "people-centered" social policy system is becoming more and more perfect.
From the new terms and buzzwords introduced during the two sessions, people can see the country's precision regulation of macro policies and its strategic planning for future development. The emphasis on "major provincial economies assuming greater responsibility" outlines a roadmap for enhancing the resilience of the national industrial chain, driven by these provinces. The proposal to establish "a group of zero-carbon industrial parks and factories" signifies China's commitment to pursuing a comprehensive green transformation. The "zero-based budgeting" approach breaks the traditional reliance on existing budget paths, while the initiative to "strictly control the number of people on the government payroll" demonstrates the central government's determination to manage fiscal expenditures rigorously. The proposals to "encourage the entry of long- and medium-term capital into the market" and strengthen the "market stabilization mechanisms" enhance confidence in the healthy development of the capital market. The suggestion to "introduce city-specific policies on adjusting or reducing property transaction restriction" provides a pathway for alleviating difficulties in the real estate market.
The emergence of such a dense array of "new concepts" during the two sessions signifies that China's "dual-engine" drive for technological and institutional innovation has entered an era of accelerated development. The enthusiastic response they have elicited in Chinese society constitutes a "two-way effort" between policy innovation and social understanding, embodying the public's new expectations for the future development of China's economy and society. When terms such as "funds and resources used to serve the people" and "better housing" become buzzwords, more potential forces will be transformed into direct driving forces for development.
From the technological direction of "embodied AI" and the governance wisdom of "zero-based budgeting" to the innovative vitality of "gazelle companies" and the value positioning of "more funds and resources used to serve the people," the new terms matrix from the 2025 two sessions reveals a China putting people first, a vibrant and innovative China and a China committed to high-quality development.
Within the coordinates constructed by the world's most complete industrial chain and ultra-large market scale, these new buzzwords signify the vibrant vitality of Chinese modernization and outline an upward curve of high-quality development.