上海率先告别增长目标

All over China, local legislators are busy working out their priorities for the year of 2015. In Shanghai the local legislators have been making their plans for the coming year, but for the first time they have dropped something in their annual blueprint, something very important as China works to shift its focus from quanitity to quality.

A landmark break from the country's obsession with GDP. Shanghai has abandoned GDP growth targets in its annual government work report this year, emphasizing higher quality and efficiency in the economy instead.

"The goal for Shanghai's economy this year is to maintain steady growth while introducing structural optimization and achieving better quality and higher efficiency, and deepening opening up and reforms," Shanghai mayor Yang Xiong said.

He said the city will continue to optimize economic structure and revise its growth model from an investment-driven to an innovation-driven one.

"We will speed up the process of innovation. We need to follow the trend of science and technology and attract talents to build up a technology innovation center with global influence," Shanghai mayor Yang Xiong said.

Shanghai's GDP hit 2.36 trillion yuan in 2014, an increase of seven percentage points from 2013.

However, the figure falls just short of the 7.5 percent growth target set for the year. The Chinese government has called for greater tolerance at slower growth, as several provinces and municipalities have lowered their goals for 2015 growth after missing targets last year.

Shanghai is the first Chinese city to drop its GDP growth targets in its annual work report. Experts say a more diversified basket of metrics will gradually replace the traditional GDP figure, but it will never be totally overlooked, as it provides a solid indication of economic performance.