Hu wants GDP, PCI doubled by 2020

BEIJING, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Outgoing Chinese President Hu Jintao Thursday said China should seek to double economic growth and per capita income by 2020 from its 2010 levels.

Chinese economy, facing a slowdown because of global economic conditions, is the world's second largest after the United States with growth being driven largely by exports. However, the slowdown has forced policymakers to boost domestic demand to reduce reliance on exports.

"On the basis of making China's development much more balanced, coordinated and sustainable, we should double its 2010 (gross domestic product) and per capita income for both urban and rural residents (by 2020)," Hu said in his keynote address at the opening of the Chinese Communist Party's 18th congress in Beijing, official media reported.

The party convention is convened every five years. This year's meeting also will see China's once-in-a-decade leadership change, with Hu expected to be succeeded by Xi Jinping.

The report said this is the first time per capita income was added to calls for GDP growth in China's plans for 2020.

Official figures indicted the per capita income of urban dwellers in China in 2011 was $3,493, up 14.1 percent from 2010, but that of the rural residents was only about one-third of that, the reports said.

China's GDP is about $7.3 trillion. The U.S. GDP last year was nearly $16 trillion.

Hu said China must deepen income distribution reforms and increase individual incomes in step with economic development.

"We should raise the share of individual income in the distribution of national income and increase the share of work remuneration in primary distribution," he said.

The biggest challenge facing the economic targets would downward pressure in the Chinese economy, one party delegate told China Daily.