China announces lowest growth targets since 1990

China’s economic growth target for 2019 is its lowest in the last thirty years. In his speech to the 13th National People’s Assembly, Prime Minister Li Keqiang yesterday warned of the “hard challenges” facing the world’s second-largest economy. Li Keqiang set a target for gross domestic product (GDP) growth of between 6% and 6.5%, one tenth less than last year and the lowest since 1990. With regard to inflation, the Chinese Prime Minister put it at around 3%, taking into account that the urban and rural unemployment rates are around 5.5% and 4.5%, respectively.

During his speech, Li Keqiang admitted that his country faces “difficult challenges” this year in the economic field, both from the interior as well as from the outside. “Looking back, we can see that it has not been easy to achieve what we have achieved,” said the prime minister, who admitted that “a combination of old and new and cyclical and structural problems has led to changes in what has usually been a stable economic performance.”

Li Keqiang also touched on the commercial war with the US, regarding which he said that Beijing “will continue to promote negotiations.” Other factors were diplomatic tensions and complaints about the human rights situation in China.