Quality metrics set to transcend GDP goals

China will not set a target to double its gross domestic product from 2021 on, and it will put more emphasis on quality of growth, a senior official said on Thursday.

Analysts said the country will deepen its supply-side structural reform, promote employment, increase incomes and strengthen environmental protection to improve the quality of economic development.

"China's main social contradiction has changed and its economic development is moving to a stage of high-quality growth from a high-rate of expansion of the GDP," said Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs. "The biggest problem facing us now ... is the inadequate quality of development," he said at a news conference.