Quality, efficiency more important than fixed growth rate, official says

Quantitative growth targets such as ensuring a 6 percent GDP growth rate may become less important in 2020, as the country transforms its growth model amid high-quality development pursuits, according to a senior official on Monday.

"As long as economic development complies with the requirements of the (high-quality) development phase, I think either a quicker or slower economic growth will be acceptable," Fu Linghui, a spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics, said at a news conference on Monday.

Instead of ensuring a fixed growth number, China's economic development in the next year should be aimed at full employment, stable price levels, continuous rises in people's income, improvements in the ecological environment, and a higher quality and efficiency of development, Fu said.

China's economic development has transformed from the phase of high growth speeds underpinned by high inputs of resources into a new phase that features a slower growth but improvements in the quality and efficiency of growth, according to him.