China sets out ambitious goals for growth, but can its economy really match them?

Live from the BBC World Service.

This is the Marketplace Morning Report.

I'm Will Bain in for Leanneburn today, great as always to have your company first thing in the morning.

Yes, China's National People's Congress, that big annual political meeting we discussed yesterday

is underway and the government's been laying out its aims for the year ahead.

It's targeting 5% growth, which given China's recent economic woes, feels somewhat ambitious.

The BBC's Monica Miller told us more.

Just to give you a sense, last year it grew at about 5.2 percent, which I think some economies

would absolutely love, but for China, this is a rather low number.

Just a decades ago, we used to look at these and they would be in the double

digits per year and anything less than that was seen as a failure. So they have really kind of come

back down to earth and they really do have some serious economic

headwinds their way.

Right and those headwinds was something that the Premier Lee Chung pointed out, didn't he?

Premier Lee Chang did acknowledge in his speech that, you know, the country is facing difficulties, adding

that many of these have yet to be resolved, which was a rather sobering point that

he had made in speeches that tend to be full of of positive

attitudes and you know a positive outlook looking ahead but yes he did mention

the property sector which is one of the biggest problems China is facing right now.

It is in a crisis mode, as many developers had defaulted on their debts following a crackdown

on excess borrowing.

...