China sets its GDP growth target at 7.5 percent this year, down from 8 percent in 2011, according to a government work report to be delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the parliament's annual session Monday.
This is the first time for the Chinese government to lower its economic growth target after keeping it around 8 percent for seven consecutive years.
"Here I wish to stress that in setting a slightly lower GDP growth rate, we hope to make it fit with targets in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, and to guide people in all sectors to focus their work on accelerating the transformation of the pattern of economic development and making economic development more sustainable and efficient, so as to achieve higher-level, higher-quality development over a longer period of time," reads the report which was distributed to the media./.