Rigid growth targets relaxed

China is abandoning most numerical economic targets from its decades-old planning system as part of an effort to give �greater play to market forces� and to change the country’s obsession with growth at the expense of social programs and the environment, the Financial Times reported. Only two economic targets have been included in the latest five-year plan, released on Monday � an ongoing promise to double per capita gross domestic product in the 10 years to 2010 and a pledge to reduce energy consumption per unit of output in the five years to the end of the decade. Fan Jianping, the director of the economic forecasting department of the State Information Centre, said the aim of the reform was to distinguish �which area is the responsibility of the government and which should be left to the market�.