Economists expect China to cut growth target in 2015

Beijing

CHINA is poised to cut its growth target for the first time in three years and ramp up stimulus as the economy comes under increasing downward pressure, analysts say ahead of a key policymakers' conference expected this week.

President Xi Jinping and other top leaders are trying to put China's increasingly affluent consumers at the centre of the world's second-largest economy, rather than investment and exports, and are ready to tolerate slower expansion in gross domestic product to achieve more sustainable growth.