China Expects Per Capita GDP to Quadruple

President Hu Jintao said China’s per capita gross domestic product can quadruple by 2020 with lower resource consumption and greater environmental protection.

We will quadruple the per capita GDP of the year 2000 by 2020 through optimizing the economic structure and improving economic returns while reducing consumption of resources and protecting the environment, Hu told Monday’s opening session of the 17th Communist Party Congress, Xinhua news agency reported.

The report said the new goal is far higher than the target set by the party at its previous congress in 2002, which only spoke of quadrupling the overall GDP.

The GDP, which stood at $2.7 trillion in 2006, has been growing at more than 10 percent in the past four years but that came at an excessively high cost of resources and the environment, Hu said. Last year’s per capita GDP was $2,042.

Hu promised a basic system of social security to provide basic living standards and health service to both urban and rural residents and a pattern of income distribution that will eliminate absolute poverty.