BEIJING – China faces a tough task to achieve about 7% economic growth in 2015, but the world's second largest economy will still post "strong growth" while reforming its economic structure and streamlining government, China's Premier Li Keqiang said Sunday.
"It will be by no means easy" to achieve the GDP target, China's slowest rate for a quarter century, but the figure reflects a "new normal" of seeking better quality growth and a "more solid foundation to achieve economic modernization", Li said at a news conference to close the annual session of China's legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC).
Achieving 7% growth, in an economy he valued at $10 trillion, is "equivalent to the total economic size of a medium-size country," and contributes to global economic growth, Li said. Despite widespread worries about government debt in China, Li said China was fully capable of preventing systemic and regional financial risks.
With the USA, China seeks to "build a new model of a major country relationship featuring mutual respect and no conflict and no confrontation," he said. The state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping in September and a bilateral investment treaty under negotiation will boost ties between the world's largest developed and developing countries, he said.
Although China ranks as the world's second largest economy, the more important figure is per capita GDP, where China lies behind about 80 other nations, Li said. A recent visit to poor families in western China had "pained his heart." He noted the World Bank estimates that 200 million Chinese still live in poverty.
Beijing is not getting a "free ride" internationally, but instead pursues its peaceful foreign policy while "assuming greater due international obligations and responsibilities," said Li, who followed Chinese government policy in declining to criticize Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Li took journalists' questions at the close of the legislative session, which met for 11 days in Beijing's Great Hall of the People beside Tiananmen Square. The Chinese premier bookends the highly orchestrated session by giving a State of the Union-style speech on its first day, then holding a rare news conference on its last.
While Western leaders such as U.S. President Obama regularly face reporters and unscripted questions, China's still-closed system of government shields its senior officials from media scrutiny and tightly controls Chinese media. Sunday was Li's only scheduled news conference all year. Xi likewise rarely faces the media.
The two-hour session of mostly pre-screened questions is a key ritual at the often-ceremonial session, but it did highlight several themes raised by the 3,000 hand-picked delegates. On the nation's choking smog, Li vowed tougher measures against polluting firms and admitted "the progress we have made still falls far short of the expectations of the people."
The fight against official corruption, where "no one is above the law," will continue, Li said, although he offered no news on the closely watched case of Zhou Yongkang, the highest ranking official to be snared in Xi's campaign against graft.
One dramatic graft case broke Sunday, when Qiu He, a senior Communist Party official and media star in southwest China's Yunnan province, was put under investigation for breaking the law and violating party discipline, the state-run Xinhua News Agency announced after Li's news conference. Just the day before, Qiu had appeared at an legislature meeting, and he was on the cover of the Sunday Yunnan Daily newspaper.
China will allow more public oversight of officials, set up an accountability system, Li said. His comments did not convince some residents, as the government refuses to allow independent supervision.
Beijing high school teacher Xu Xiancheng wrote on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog, "It's inconceivable to let a drug-user control his addiction, but more interesting is how you let a drug-user supervise the drugs, that's my feeling towards the party's anti-corruption (fight)."
Li promised to streamline the bureaucracy by simplifying and cutting the number of necessary government approvals. He also said he would make it easier for entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to the market. Reforming the government "is not like clipping nails but like taking a knife to one's own flesh," but China will persevere to get the job done, Li said.
On China's "one child" policy, many delegates had raised proposals calling for China to expand the recent relaxation of family planning to allow all couples to have two children. Li said Sunday that further change must await a government review of the recent reform that allows couples to have two children, even if just one of the parents is a single child. Parents where both are single children have long been allowed two offspring.
Contributing: Sunny Yang
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