Prospective home buyers in Lanzhou, Northwest China’s Gansu Province await the results of an apartment selection lottery for a local property project on Saturday. Local people continue to have home-buying fever despite the central government’s calls to rein in the country’s booming property sector. Photo: IC

 
An annual average GDP growth of at least 7 percent in the next seven years will allow China to double the 2010 GDP by 2020, an official at the research office of the State Council said Monday.

Speaking at a press briefing in Beijing on Monday, Yang Shubing, head of the Information Research Department at the Research Office of the State Council, the country's cabinet, said that China could achieve its strategic goal of doubling its GDP and annual income per capita between 2010 and 2020.

"Even if the economic growth slips below 7 percent annually after 2020, China could achieve its target of realizing modernization by 2050," Yang said, noting that the lower limit of economic growth is still 7.5 percent this year.

"In the first 30 years since China's reform and opening-up, the potential annual growth rate of the economy was 10 percent and the reasonable growth range was between 8 percent and 12 percent," Fan Jianping, chief economist with the State Information Center (SIC), a government think-tank, told the Global Times Monday.

"Between 2011 and 2020, the potential annual growth rate of the economy will be 8 percent. That means a reasonable growth range for the 10 years will be between 7 percent and 9 percent, so the 7 percent growth rate is the bottom line for the period," Fan said.

Commenting on the speech made by Premier Li Keqiang at the opening ceremony of the Summer Davos Forum last week, Yang acknowledged Monday that the government's innovation in macro management helped China achieve the smooth economic performance in the first half of the year.

Facing the downward pressure in the economy, the government proposed a reasonable growth range of the economy and is striving to stabilize the economy through restructuring and reform instead of rolling out stimulus," Yang said.

Premier Li said Wednesday in Dalian that China is at a crucial stage and will not be able to achieve sustained economic growth without structural transformation and upgrading, and expected to use the reform to unleash fresh institutional vitality.

The country's GDP slowed to 7.6 percent in the first six months of 2013, the weakest first-half performance in three years but above the full-year target of 7.5 percent.

The government has said it will focus on restructuring and advancing reforms as long as the economic growth rate does not fall below the lower threshold of 7.5 percent and inflation doesn't rise beyond the upper threshold of 3.5 percent.

"The biggest innovation of macro management by the government is proposing a reasonable range for economic growth. It helps stabilize market expectations and avoids chaos in the capital market and real economy," Fan from SIC said.

Positive signs for China's economy have emerged since August amid a raft of economic data released recently, showing that the economy is stabilizing following a shaky first half of the year.

The latest evidence came Saturday when China's power consumption, a key indicator of economic activity, rose 13.7 percent year-on-year in August, the third straight month of recovery since June and the fastest rise since March 2012.

On August 27, the Political Bureau decided that the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee will be held in November in Beijing to discuss deeper reforms.