BALANCED GROWTH

The central economic work meeting emphasized the traditional over-reliance on investment for growth had ended, and also highlighted the balance between consumption, investment and exports to adjust industrial structure and reduce overcapacity.

The country should "make efforts to free up demand, give full play to the fundamental role of consumption, the pivotal role of investment and the supporting role of exports," said a statement after the meeting.

Jiang said China was expected to adopt specific measures to realize its goals, and one of them was that gross domestic product (GDP) growth was no longer the only criterion for weighing local governments' performance.

Hassan Raghab, professor of the Chinese Faculty of Egypt's Ain Shams University, said the conference sent a message that the Chinese government would continue to reform and open up to the world.

Rather than just pursuing the speed of development, Beijing would put more emphasis on economic and social stability. It might moderately slow development speed but make the economic structure more reasonable and the foundation more solid, so as to prevent potential risks, Raghab said.

INCLUSIVE GROWTH

The meeting also highlighted improving people's lives, employment of university graduates and re-employment of the laid-off, demonstrating China's aspiration for inclusive growth.

In Raghab's opinion, China had to balance the growth of big cities and small towns; and it was noteworthy the government, at the meeting, had stressed the importance of narrowing the income gap and protecting the weak, which were crucial in achieving an inclusive growth.

Song Yu, an economist at Goldman Sachs, said the meeting did not ask to "regulate and control" the real estate market, but to "solve" the housing problem, which reflected a greater concern of the government that prioritized increasing supply instead of reducing demand.