Pushing GDP growth is no longer the Chinese government’s top priority, said Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University, quoted by
Guancha.cn, a Shanghai-based online news and comments aggregator.
Commenting on the annual government work report, Zhang said that major economic indicators such as employment, deficits and commodity prices are now all under control, meaning there is no need to strengthen their performance through stronger GDP growth.
In the short term, the government’s top priorities will be to prevent financial risk, alleviate poverty and target pollution. Setting a higher goal for GDP growth may in fact hamper these missions, he said.
In terms of employment expansion, China has seen annual growth of 13 million working people for many years in a row. But most of these jobs were created in low-end services and are only sufficient to sustain a basic livelihood, said the scholar, suggesting that in the future, employment tasks should also aim to help low-earners to get better-paid jobs.
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