Over the past week, the annual plenary sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing have attracted media attention at home and abroad. For everyone interested in China, the ongoing annual sessions have become an unparalleled occasion to perceive the new pulses of China's development from an all-around perspective.
China has gained wide recognition for successfully coping with the global financial crisis and being among the first in the world to march toward an economic recovery. Against this background, any move China takes during the Beijing sessions will touch upon the nerves of the global market and the world economy.
In business circles, the Chinese economy has become an inseparable part of the world.
"Any hiccup in China's recovery could have global repercussions if it erodes the country's demand for U.S. and European factory equipment or imported iron ore and other raw materials from Australia, Brazil and other countries," the Associated Press (AP) said in a report on China's NPC sessions.
World media, including the AP, have kept close watch on the positive signals the NPC sessions have sent on China's economy.
In a government work report to the session of the NPC on March 5, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China expected its economy to grow around 8 percent in 2010 from a year earlier.
Justin Yifu Lin, senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, said the goal of 8 percent growth was "possible."
He forecast that China would account for about 30 percent of the increase of the world economy in 2010 if it secured 8 percent growth.
Through the NPC sessions, China also showed the world its determination to change its economic growth pattern to re-optimize and re-adjust its economic structure.
Setting the 8-percent target mainly "aims at ensuring the quality of economic growth, focusing on transformation of the economic growth pattern and adjustment of the economic structure," Wen said.
In the meantime, China is turning its attention to social equality and welfare, striving to build a society with more equality, fairness and justice.
Premier Wen's remarks in his report -- "Everything we do is to ensure that the people live a happier life with more dignity and to make our society fairer and more harmonious," have become a catch phrase among international scholars on China.
Richard Baum, former director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies, said "putting people first" was a noble idea and it showed China's commitment to raise the living standard of the general public.
Another eye-catching point of the sessions is a draft amendment to the Electoral Law.
The amendment seeks to grant equal representation to the country's legislatures at all levels, ensuring equality among people, regions and ethnic groups.
The draft stipulates that both rural and urban areas adopt the same ratio of deputies to the represented population in elections of deputies to People's Congresses, China's fundamental political system.
South Korea's leading newspaper, The Joongang Daily, commented that the move was a "new step" in China's politics.
The world media have also noticed the use Internet technologies in the Beijing sessions.
During the sessions, millions of Chinese netizens were debating governmental policies on the web, and deputies were eager to collect proposals from the general public via web tools like blogs and micro-blogs.
The BBC's Chinese website dubbed the phenomenon as "E"-parliament sessions, commenting that it was very "rare" in the West that the media and the general public were so passionate.
The increasing attention paid by the world to the Beijing sessions reflected the rise of China's influence in the international arena. In the meantime, by keeping close watch on the sessions, the world could gain more insights into the prospects of China's development in years to come.