Abstract: China’s economy is facing multiple emerging downward pressures such as shrinking demand, supply shock and weakening expectations. It has thus become an important practical topic to implement the guideline of seeking progress while maintaining stability and to achieve high-quality development. Externally, the unprecedented changes and Covid-19 pandemic have brought great uncertainty to China’s economy. Internally, cyclical, policy, institutional and structural factors are intertwined; and particularly, some policy adjustments are not proper in timing, intensity and effect, exacerbating the difficult operations of market microeconomic agents. At the same time, China’s economic development is still lacking in innovation, coordination, ecology, openness and sharing, far from meeting the requirements of new development philosophy and achieving high-quality development. In this situation, China needs to simultaneously carry out cross-cycle policy design, counter-cyclical adjustment and deepening reform and opening up, so as to achieve progress amid stability and high-quality development. To stabilize the overall economy, it is necessary to intensify the implementation of more stable, consistent, and predictable macroeconomic policies, adopt more accurate, sustainable proactive fiscal policies, and employ more flexible, appropriate prudent monetary policies. However, short-term policies should be aimed mainly at dealing with shrinking demand and supply shock, whereas seeking progress amid stability in the short term and high-quality development in the medium and long term should rely critically and fundamentally on deep-seated structural and institutional reform and governance, and the role of higher-level opening-up and growth dividends, so as to reform the basic formal institution and informal institution environment, and truly incorporate the philosophy of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development into the formulation and implementation of policies and reform measures. This serves as the most effective countermeasure to address the pressure of weakening expectations and to achieve high-quality development.