China is abandoning most numerical economic targets from its decades-old planning system as part of an effort to change the country’s obsession with growth at the expense of social programmes and the environment.

...Only two economic targets have been included in the plan – an ongoing promise to double per capita gross domestic product in the 10 years to 2010 and a pledge to reduce energy consumption per unit of output in the five years to the end of the decade.


Ma Kai, the commission chairman, said at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress: “Our economic growth may be increasing but we would like to know the environmental price we are paying to achieve it.”

All other “obligatory” targets in the new plan focus on social spending, in education and health, and on the environment, including the disposal of waste and pollutants.

... Another, largely unstated, reason for change is that the planning process has become discredited by the reform commission’s off-target predictions in recent years, especially for power generation and coal production.