(Reuters) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao cut his nation’s 2012 growth target to an eight-year low of 7.5 percent and made boosting consumer demand the year’s first priority as Beijing looks to wean the economy off its reliance on external demand and foreign capital. …
“We aim to promote steady and robust economic development, keep prices stable, and guard against financial risks by keeping the total money and credit supply at an appropriate level, and taking a cautious and flexible approach,” Wen said in his annual work report to the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s annual parliamentary session. …
His annual state-of-the-nation report to parliament dwelled on the institutional and income barriers the government must break to build a more balanced economy that relies less on exports and shares more wealth with hundreds of millions of poor farmers and migrant workers who are reluctant to spend. …
Shifting that balance is a key goal for Wen and Hu, both 69, as they near the end of a decade in power which has seen China become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, contributing more to global growth than any other nation, while seeing a chasm widen between rich and poor. The number of Chinese billionaires nearly doubled in 2011 to 146 from 2010, Forbes said.
Stability, steady growth and spreading wealth are core justifications for more than 60 years of one-party rule by the Communist Party, which will install a new cohort of leaders by the end of 2012. …
The last year in power for Wen and Hu has shuddered with anxieties about inflation, a feverish property market, local government debt, stubborn inequality and social strains from protesting villages to ethnic tensions in western regions. …
Critics, including prominent policy-advisers, have said the Chinese government can foster healthy long-term growth only by taking on bolder reforms to rein in state-owned conglomerates and other entrenched interests — reforms that ultimately spill into sensitive issues of curbing the party’s own powers.
Wen has stood out among China’s leaders as the most persistent advocate of measured political relaxation, and has cast himself as a passionate advocate for farmers struggling with economic insecurity and land lost to developers.
“We should care more deeply for rural migrant workers and provide more services to them,” he said. “We will place farmland under strict protection.”
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