Shanghai Municipality has made a landmark break with China's decades-long obsession with GDP growth targets, becoming the first major region in the country to ditch the targets altogether from its annual work report.
Delivering his report to the the full session of the municipal legislature, Shanghai mayor Yang Xiong explained that instead of prioritizing economic growth über alles, the city would focus on "introducing structural optimization and achieving better quality and higher efficiency, and deepening opening up and reforms."
This year, China's economy grew at it's slowest rate in decades, sinking to a 24-year low of just 7.4 percent, missing their 7.5 percent target. President Xi Jinping, however, who said last year that "we can no longer simply use GDP growth rates to decide who the [Party] heroes are," has referred to this new state of affairs as the "new normal" to which China must adapt as its economy matures.
For decades, the promotion of local officials has been strongly linked to their economic performance - measured almost exclusively by the GDP growth in their jurisdictions. Combined with the phenomenon of "top-down amplification" whereby growth rates set by the central government become higher and higher as they move down to the provincial, municipal and county levels, this had led to warped incentives that encourage officials to turn a blind eye to environmental damage and human rights abuses in a blind dash to reach targets.
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