(Yicai) Jan. 20 -- The chief executive of artificial intelligence firm MiniMax was among nine representatives from various sectors to speak at a symposium for soliciting opinions and suggestions on the draft government work report and the draft outline of China's 15th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Last year was extraordinary, with China increasing its counter-cyclical adjustment efforts and introducing many practical measures in stabilizing growth, adjusting structure, benefiting people's livelihoods, and other, while faced with a complex and severe external situation, Yan Junjie and the other eight speakers from the tech, education, science, culture, public health, and sports sectors said at the symposium, presided over by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Xinhua reported yesterday.

The other speakers were Ming Ming, chief economist of Citic Securities, He Jia, vice dean of Nankai University's School of Finance, Zhang Zhigang, chairman of State Grid Corporation of China, Gong Qihuang, president of Peking University, Yu Xiaohui, head of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Wang Yongjun, director of Beijing Tiantan Hospital and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhou Liya, a choreographer who co-created popular dance drama Poetic Dance: The Journey of a Legendary Landscape Painting, and Shi Yujie, a world badminton champion.

Positive factors in development continued to accumulate, factor flows remained active, and market confidence significantly strengthened, with truly remarkable achievements being made, the speakers noted, while putting forward opinions and suggestions on doing a good job in economic and social development over the next five years based on their respective fields.

China's economy forged ahead under pressure and developed in a new and better direction last year, Li said after carefully listening to the speakers' remarks. Emerging industries accelerated their cultivation and expansion, and market demand continued to expand and improve, showing strong resilience and vitality, he stated.

This year marks the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan, with the external situation remaining complex and volatile, an increasing number of uncertain and unpredictable factors, and many persisting old problems and new challenges in economic development, Li noted. However, the supporting conditions and basic trends for the long-term improvement of the Chinese economy have not changed, with broad prospects for high-quality development, he pointed out.

Certainty of high-quality development must be used to address the uncertainties in the development environment, Li said, calling for efforts to carry forward high-quality development as the guiding goal and implement a more proactive fiscal policy and a moderately loose monetary policy.

Li highlighted the need to broaden the pathways to realizing high-quality development, strengthen innovation-driven growth, deepen reform and opening up, place strategic emphasis on expanding domestic demand, and steadily increase the internal momentum of development. He also urged closely integrating pro-people policies with consumption promotion, and combining investment in physical assets with that in human capital to foster new economic growth drivers and continuously enhance public welfare.

Yan was only the second representative from an AI company to attend the prime minister's symposium after DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng. Set up in early 2022, MiniMax recently went public in Hong Kong and has a market capitalization of nearly HKD120 billion (USD15.4 billion).

Editor: Martin Kadiev