BEIJING: China is targeting growth of 6.5% in 2017 — down slightly from last year’s actual 6.7% rate — a 25-year low for the industrial powerhouse. Despite the decline, that growth would keep China’s economy as one of the world’s strongest — the second-largest behind the U.S. “An important reason for stressing the need to maintain steady growth is to ensure employment and improve people’s lives,” said Premier Li Keqiang, the nation’s top economic official, Sunday at the opening of the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing. China eyes global economic leadership as U.S. turns inward. The last time China’s target for gross national product growth dipped was to 6% in 1992. The country will “pursue better results in actual economic work,” he said.
China will also seek to cut its surplus steel production, which is straining trade relations with the U.S. and Europe, Li told the national legislature. He also promised to improve access to China for foreign companies. With the U.S. and Europe seeking trade controls, China faces “more complicated and graver situations” geopolitically, Li said. “Both the de-globalization trend and protectionism are growing,” he said. “There are many uncertainties about the direction of the major economies’ policies and their spillover effects, and the factors that could cause instability and uncertainty are visibly increasing.” China aims to create more than 11 million jobs this year, with registered urban unemployment rate kept within 4.5%, according to Li’s report to the legislature on the Chinese State Council’s website. That is down from 13.14 million jobs created in 2016 and a jobless rate of 4.02% at the end of 2016.
