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BEIJING: Chinese President Hu Jintao set a new target for economic growth Monday, urging a quadrupling of the gross domestic product as he opened the five-year meeting of the Communist Party.
"We will quadruple per capita GDP of the year 2000 by 2020 through optimising the economic structure and improving economic returns while reducing consumption of resources and protecting the environment," he said.
Hu made the pledge in his long-anticipated work report to the party's Congress, which reviews the past five years and looks ahead at what needs to be done in the next five.
The new objective is more ambitious than previous targets set for 2020, which have merely called for a quadrupling of the economy, not of per capita GDP.
The change marks a significant difference as China's population, which was just below 1.3 billion in 2000, is forecast to rise to as much as 1.5 billion by 2020.
Hu's call comes in spite of months of attempts to cool down an economy that gained 11.5 per cent in the first half of 2007 and looks set for a fifth year of double-digit growth.
Hu said the government will also push for an increase in domestic consumption, something China's trading partners have long called for to address its huge trade surpluses.
China "must pursue a policy of boosting domestic demand, particularly consumer demand," Hu said.
He called for a transition away from the economy's reliance on foreign investment and exports to a "well-coordinated combination of consumption, investment and exports."
- AFP/yb
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