China has backed away from setting long-term economic growth targets, which experts say have forced Beijing to adopt aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli that have led to a dangerous debt build-up, wasteful investment and environmental degradation.
The course correction reflects President Xi Jinping’s increased room to manoeuvre following a five-yearly Communist party congress in which he consolidated his political power. The party leadership enshrined Mr Xi’s name and signature slogans in its constitution alongside those of Mao Zedong, while declining to designate a Xi successor, whose presence might have diluted the president’s authority.
In a three-hour speech at the opening of the congress last week, Mr Xi did not mention his previously announced goal of doubling real gross domestic product from its 2010 level by 2020, leading observers to wonder whether it had been tacitly abandoned.