China sets 2025 GDP growth target at around 5%, projecting confidence in economy

Beijing: China on Wednesday set a growth target of around 5 percent for its economy in 2025, which remains the same as last year’s goal, indicating top policymakers’ solid confidence in the stable growth of the world’s second-largest economy despite rising global risks and challenges.

The annual official growth target was unveiled in the Government Work Report delivered by Premier Li Qiang to the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature, which began its annual session on Wednesday morning.

In addition to the GDP growth target, the Government Work Report also contained a slew of other targets. The deficit-to-GDP ratio, another closely watched figure, was set at around 4 percent for 2025.

The country has set the surveyed urban unemployment rate at around 5.5 percent for 2025, while the CPI is set at around 2 percent in 2025.

China will issue a total of 1.3 trillion yuan (about $182 billion) of ultra-long special treasury bonds in 2025, up 300 billion yuan from last year, according to the Government Work Report.

The country also plans to issue 4.4 trillion yuan (about $613.67 billion) of local government special-purpose bonds in 2025, an increase of 500 billion yuan over last year, according to the Government Work Report.

“In proposing these targets, we have considered evolving dynamics both at home and abroad and other relevant factors, including both what is needed and what is possible,” the report said, “a target of around 5 percent is well aligned with our mid- and long-term development goals and underscores our resolve to meet difficulties head-on and strive hard to deliver.”

For context, in 2024, China’s GDP grew by 5 percent, surpassing 130 trillion yuan ($17.82 trillion) for the first time, successfully achieving key economic and social development goals.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world, but one certainty is China’s stable and dynamic economic growth. In 2025, China’s GDP is on track to grow at a rate of at least 5 percent, sustaining its position as a key driver of global growth by contributing over 30 percent to global expansion. That is good news – not just for China but also for the world at large,” Justin Yifu Lin, a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body, and dean of Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, told the Global Times in an exclusive interview.

Lin, who was a former chief economist of the World Bank, said that while China must navigate challenges in 2025, China still holds a solid potential for stable growth and should be able to maintain a growth rate of at least 5 percent in the coming years up to 2035.

“Confidence stems from China’s ability to fully leverage its monetary and fiscal policy space, coupled with industrial policies that transform traditional manufacturing through intelligentization, digitalization and green initiatives, to ensure high-quality economic growth,” Lin said.

The Government Work Report on Wednesday also outlined a slew of policy measures in 2025. China will adopt a more proactive fiscal policy, and apply an appropriately accommodative monetary policy, the report said.

“We will refine and develop new structural monetary policy instruments to provide stronger support for sound development of the real estate sector and the stock market, for scientific and technological innovation, green development, the boosting of consumption, and for private businesses and micro and small enterprises,” read the report.

“At a time of rising uncertainties in the external environment and growing challenges, achieving such a growth target will be no small feat. However, China still possesses many comparative advantages, along with a series of forthcoming macro-level incremental policies, to ensure that the goal will be achieved,” Yu Miaojie, the president of Liaoning University and a deputy to the NPC, told the Global Times.

Yu noted that the growth target of around 5 percent is in line with China’s potential economic growth rate, and setting such a goal is necessary to help unleash the potential of China’s economic development. “I am fully confident about China’s economic growth,” he said.

The Government Work Report, while noting “formidable tasks in economic and social development” this year, also outlined several major priorities and key links that the country will focus on, including vigorously boosting consumption and investment returns and stimulating domestic demand across the board, and developing new quality productive forces in light of local conditions and accelerating the development of a modernized industrial system.

To boost consumption, China will launch special initiatives and ultra-long special treasury bonds totaling 300 billion yuan will be issued to support consumer goods trade-in programs. To expand effective investment this year, 735 billion yuan will be earmarked in the central government budget for investment, according to the report.

In terms of new quality productive forces, China will foster emerging industries and industries of the future. “We will establish a mechanism to increase funding for industries of the future and foster industries such as biomanufacturing, quantum technology, embodied AI, and 6G technology,” the report said.

“China is also set to seize opportunities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, prioritizing breakthroughs in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence,” Lin said, noting that structural reforms will also be pushed forward to foster entrepreneurial innovation. “Combining all these efforts, the country is well-positioned to hit the growth targets outlined by the central government,” he said.

China’s official growth target for 2025 also exceeded projections made by some international organizations. In December, the World Bank raised its forecast for China’s economic growth in 2025 to 4.5 percent from its previous forecast of 4.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the growth target is in line with some foreign financial institutions’ expectations. In a research note shared with the Global Times ahead of the release of the official target, researchers at Standard Chartered, a UK-based bank, said that they expected a growth target of about 5 percent for 2025, noting that local two sessions have revealed growth targets between 4.5 percent and 7 percent, resulting in a weighted average growth target of 5.3 percent.