Many Chinese provinces set lower GDP growth targets
January 30, 2018 Category China News Round-up, Weekly
Several Chinese provinces have lowered their GDP growth targets for this year after China’s President Xi Jinping stressed that local governments should be aiming for sustainable economic growth rather than just chasing higher figures. Among the 19 provinces and municipalities that have released their growth targets for 2018 as of January 25, 12 have lowered their goals, with figures for the other six unchanged. Only Shanxi province has set a higher growth target for this year.
Tianjin municipality set its GDP target at 5% in 2018, compared to last year’s 8%. The move comes after the Binhai New Area, the city’s economic zone touted as China’s future version of Manhattan, admitted this month that it had inflated its GDP figure by a third in 2016. After excluding the figures for companies that were registered but not operating in the area, Binhai’s GDP was only CNY665.4 billion in 2016, instead of the CNY1 trillion it previously stated. The city’s economy only grew 3.6% the following year – far off its target.
Inner Mongolia, another province that admitting cooking its books, lowered its GDP target for this year to about 6.5% from 7.5% in 2017. The regional government inflated industrial output figures by about 40% and fiscal revenues by 26% in 2016. It reported growth of only 4% last year. Bu Xiaolin, Governor of Inner Mongolia, said its government had to stop judging officials’ performance solely in terms of economic growth. “We can’t pursue growth for the sake of growth or investment for the sake of investment,” she said. President Xi Jinping wants to focus more on tackling pollution and alleviating poverty, rather than on the pace of economic expansion, the South China Morning Post reports.
Beijing and Shanghai both aim for growth of about 6.5% this year, unchanged from targets in 2017.
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