The accompanying word cloud conveys as accurate an impression as anything could about the content of the speech by Chinese premier Li Keqiang to the 12th...

The accompanying word cloud conveys as accurate an impression as anything could about the content of the speech by Chinese premier Li Keqiang to the 12th National People's Congress. Li described development as the key to solving every problem we face. His concession that growth of approximately 7% would be targeted gained the headlines. How much below 7% would still qualify as approximately is set to preoccupy markets in 2015. Premier Li did not display great confidence about achieving the lower target describing stable growth as becoming more difficult and leaving open the chance of falling short without deepening reform and making economic structural adjustments. The speech highlighted greater use of market forces to achieve policy ends advising that routine services that can be provided by a third party should be handed over to the market or society. Significantly for Australia's links with China, the government is conceding that a model of development that draws on high levels of investment and energy consumption and is heavily driven by quantitative expansion becomes difficult to sustain.