China trims growth target, aware of challenges ahead
Beijing — Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China recognises the difficulties and challenges it faces but remains confident it can overcome them as he explained the lowering of the country’s 2026 growth target to 4.5–5 percent.
‘Going forward, as Prime Minister Li Qiang said, we fully recognise the difficulties and challenges we face. Yet the conditions underpinning long-term growth and the fundamentals of China’s economy have not changed,’ Mao Ning told a press conference in Beijing on Friday, 6 March.
On Thursday, 5 March, Prime Minister Li Qiang, at the opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC), announced that the growth target for the country would be 4.5–5 percent in 2026, the lowest in three decades.
‘Over time, China has shown the strength of its system and the strength it possesses as a major nation. As long as we fully leverage these strengths and respond to challenges in the right way, we will surely open up more promising prospects for China’s development,’ he added.
Mao Ning said China would also fully implement its new development philosophy across all fronts, move faster to promote a new development pattern, and push high-quality development.
‘China will push high-quality economic growth while achieving increases in output in line with its capacity. We will further widen high-standard openness, adhere to mutually beneficial cooperation, and continue to advance the openness of institutions,’ he stated.
He also said China would become more integrated into the global economy so that more people around the world could benefit from China’s development.
According to Mao Ning, China’s gross domestic product in 2025 rose by nearly 10 trillion yuan year-on-year and grew by more than 35 trillion yuan over the past five years. ‘That is akin to the size of a mid-sized economy. This remarkable achievement has been attained under challenging and complex conditions, in which external shocks are linked with domestic difficulties and difficult policy choices. This speaks volumes about the resilience and extraordinary strength of China’s economy,’ Mao Ning emphasised.
In his briefing, Li Qiang explained that because the international environment is complex and full of challenges, China is committed to a strategy of expanding domestic demand.
In 2025, total retail sales of consumer goods in China were said to exceed 50 trillion yuan or contribute 52 percent to China’s overall economic growth, but household consumption in China remained relatively low compared with developed economies, at around 40 percent of GDP in early 2025.
Li Qiang noted that the government is taking steps to stimulate household spending by increasing incomes for urban and rural residents and through various practical measures to raise the incomes of low-income groups, property incomes, and to refine the remuneration and social security system.
To foster the expansion and upgrading of consumption, the government will launch an ultra-long national bond of 250 billion yuan to be allocated to a ‘trade-in’ programme for consumer goods and other policies to be refined.