Chen Xingdong says the rate this year could be around 20 percent. "Investment will not see a fundamental change until after 2009." Hu adds that "short-term returns on investments will remain high and the market mood for investment, strong This means investment will not decelerate much".

On the foreign trade front, last year's huge surplus, of 177.5 billion yuan ($23 billion), calls for caution and counter-measures. The Ministry of Commerce has set the target of 10 percent annual foreign trade growth by 2010. But it was 24 percent last year.

The World Bank said in a report last month that China's trade imbalance was "unlikely to shrink in the near term".

Trade policy makers have vowed to shift focus from quantity to quality in exports to meet the challenge. And analysts have said the export rebate policy could be adjusted further after the rate cut in September.

"The efforts to rebalance trade will, however, be a gradual process," Hu says, with Chen suggesting that the country should adjust its impetus-based export policies to gradually bring down its export rise if it wants to change its growth pattern. To shift the growth pattern from exports, people's livelihood and the environment, not economic growth, should be atop the must-do agenda.

As a sign of the shift, Premier Wen Jiabao emphasized the importance of people's well being in his report yesterday. Chen agreed totally with the premier, saying" "The central government must shift the attention of local policy makers from economic growth to people's livelihood and the environment."

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