Li Keqiang pledges to do more for stability

Premier Li Keqiang yesterday said it was not easy to achieve 2.5 percent economic growth in the first half of this year and more effort must be put into stabilizing China's economy.

While signaling flexibility on the growth target, he also reiterated caution on excessive stimulus at a meeting hosted by the World Economic Forum, as the economy shows initial signs of recovery from Covid outbreaks.

The most important thing is to keep employment and prices stable, and slightly higher or lower growth rates were acceptable as long as employment is relatively sufficient, household income grows and prices are stable, Li told global business leaders at the forum on Tuesday, according to reports in state media.

"China won't roll out massive stimulus, issue an excessive amount of money or overdraw the future for an overly high growth target," Li was quoted as saying in a report by Xinhua News Agency.

Macroeconomic policies will be targeted, strong and at the same time reasonable and appropriate, according to Li. "China will be practical and realistic, do its best, and aim to achieve a relatively good level of full-year economic growth," he said.

China's stimulus rolled out since the pandemic first hit in 2020 has been "reasonable" in scale and this has laid a foundation for preventing inflation, Li said. There's still a lot of room for the previous round of support measures announced in May to take effect, he added.

Li added that outbound commerce and trade activities, as well as cross-border travel for labor services, would be advanced in an orderly fashion. China would further resume and increase international passenger flights and steadily improve its visa and Covid-testing policies, he said.

Many economists expect China will likely miss its economic growth target of about 5.5 percent this year by a significant margin. That would be the first time: The government didn't set a target in 2020, during the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak, and only missed it by 0.2 percentage points in 1998.