China’s official economic growth targets have been trending lower over the past decade as policymakers have sought to rein in the country’s growing debt burden and stimulate more domestic consumption. Analysts said this year’s conservative economic growth target would be easier for Xi’s new economic team to meet, after falling far short of its goal in 2022. Goldman Sachs said achieving this year’s target was «not challenging», given the low base from last year. It predicted GDP would grow 5.5 per cent this year driven by the rebound in household consumption after the reversal of China’s strict zero-Covid policy.«This growth target heralds the return of headline GDP growth as the organising principle for economic and financial policies but also signals that the era of rip-roaring growth is over,» said Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. China’s most powerful president since Mao Zedong, Xi is expected to use this year’s parliamentary session, which began yesterday, to undertake sweeping changes to his administration. Reading out the government’s new work report before about 3,000 members of the Congress yesterday, Li Keqiang set a target for China’s budget deficit this year at 3 per cent of GDP while pledging to create 12mn urban jobs and keep the unemployment rate at about 5.5 per cent. China needed to «expand market access» for foreign investors, prop up consumption and control risk in the real estate sector, Li said, in one of his last appearances as China’s second-ranked official.
Aside from Li Qiang, Xi is expected to appoint new heads to the government’s main financial agencies and regulators, including the People’s Bank of China.
Since they've been doing so badly recently it won't be very hard to reach their targets for this year. Or it shouldn't be hard but we'll see what happens. Who knows what other weird measures like zero-Covid they end up coming with that slows them down?
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