THE country should focus less on rapid economic growth and more on the quality of its economy, given the dangers from already accumulating financial risks, a senior Party official warned Saturday.

In the past 30 years, China had generated near-miraculous high-speed growth, Yang Weimin, deputy director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, said at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing.

“Over the next 30 years, China can make another miracle of high-quality growth happen,” he said.

An obsession with beating growth targets has led many local government officials to develop their economies at a breakneck pace, often to the detriment of the environment and sometimes their finances.

President Xi Jinping said China should focus on the quality of its growth last October.

Economists say better-than-expected growth in 2017, when the country handily beat its target of around 6.5 percent, gives the government room to press ahead with its campaign to reduce risks in the country’s financial system.

But economists warn that it remains to be seen whether China will fall back on the old growth engines of credit-fueled investment and stimulus, and wobble on its commitment to stabilize leverage ratios.

Li Yang, an influential economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a top government think tank, told the forum China’s macro leverage ratio rose 2.5 percentage points in 2017, but the structure of the leverage has improved.

While the household debt ratio rose 4.2 percentage points to 50 percent, the debt ratio of non-financial firms fell 2.4 percentage points to 152.7 percent, Li said.

Stephen Roach, a Yale University economist, said China’s economy still faces challenges and imbalances including low private consumption and slow reforms of State-owned firms.

(SD-Agencies)