China needs to guarantee a “bottom line” of 6.5 percent annual economic growth for its 13th five-year-plan, a state newspaper quoted the director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Department of Planning, Xu Lin as saying. That would mark the lowest annual growth rate since 1990. The comments by Xu, made on Feb. 14 at the “50 Forum Annual Meeting” – a gathering of Chinese economists – is also an acknowledgment that China is switching to a more sustainable pace of growth from the double-digit rates of the recent past. If this year’s GDP growth is 7 percent, then the “bottom line” for annual GDP growth in the 13th five-year-plan needs to be at least 6.5 percent, the China Securities Journal quoted Xu as saying. China’s economy grew at 7.4 percent in 2014, its slowest pace in 24 years, dragged down by cooling property […]