China Signals Shift To Lower Growth Target Through Party Journal

China’s Communist Party has begun laying the groundwork for a lower GDP growth trajectory, with a prominent scholar arguing in a top Party journal that annual growth as low as 4.5 per cent would be sufficient to meet Beijing’s long-term development goals.

The article, written by Cui Youping, a professor at the Central Party School’s Institute of Party History and Literature, was published on the front page of Study Times, an influential ideological journal.

Cui argues that an average growth rate “above 4.5 per cent” is necessary to achieve the Party’s goal of turning China into a “moderately developed” country by 2035, a milestone first announced at the 20th Party Congress in 2022.

This is one of the clearest signals yet that the CCP is preparing to reset public expectations after years of high growth.

Although China is on track to meet its 2025 target of “around 5 per cent,” recent data, including weak domestic demand, sluggish job growth, and disappointing GDP figures from former growth engines like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, has raised questions about the sustainability of past growth levels.

Cui’s piece lists eight priorities for the upcoming 15th five-year plan, including increased investment in science and technology and improvements in quality of life.

He argues that China must shift away from traditional export-led manufacturing, which still makes up more than 80 per cent of the industrial base but is increasingly vulnerable to rising labour costs and external shocks.

Economist Shen Jianguang of JD.com added that even a lower growth target could be enough to meet the 2035 benchmark, especially if the yuan strengthens slightly against the dollar, which would boost per capita GDP figures in dollar terms.

The Central Committee is expected to formally debate the next five-year plan at its October plenum. President Xi Jinping has stressed that the plan must combine “top-level design” with input from the public. Over 3.1 million suggestions were received during a public consultation process that ran from May to June.

Despite headline growth of 5.3 per cent in the first half of the year, the Party is facing pressure to explain how it will navigate a period of weaker global demand, rising protectionism, and internal structural headwinds, all without triggering social instability. The emerging narrative suggests the answer will lie in “quality growth” over headline speed.