South China's Guangdong Province is predicting only modest growth over the next five years as it bids to maintain a balance between economic development and the creation of a harmonious society, its provincial Party secretary said this week.

Guangdong, which is the biggest contributor to the nation's GDP on the mainland, expects its GDP to grow by 9 percent a year over the next five years to 4 trillion yuan (US$522 billion) in 2011.

Its per capita GDP is expected to rise by 8 percent a year to reach 40,000 yuan by 2011.

Zhang Dejiang, the province's Communist Party secretary, was speaking at the opening of the 10th Guangdong Provincial CPC Congress on Monday.

He said Guangdong will strive for a 16-percent drop in energy consumption and will reduce the discharge of major pollutants by 15 percent over the next five years.

"Guangdong will continue its reform and opening up, and will put coordinated development between rural and urban areas as its main priority," Zhang said.

This is only the second time since the late 1970s that Guangdong has predicted an annual economic growth rate of less than 10 percent.

"Balancing economic growth and social harmonization is the best way to sustain a developing society," Dong Xiaolin, a macroeconomics professor in Guangdong, told China Daily yesterday.

Over the past two decades, the province has witnessed major economic achievements though labour-intensive manufacturing, Dong said.

Now however, it is shifting its focus to a more technology-centric approach.

Zeng Dexiong, a philosophy professor and deputy of the Guangzhou People's Congress, said: "Improving people's livelihoods has been selected as a priority in the provincial government's long-term plan.

"All of our goals will be unattainable unless people are satisfied with their living conditions," he said.

However, Dong said that Guangdong's actual economic growth usually exceeds its target.

Last year the province estimated 9-percent GDP growth, but actually generated 2.6 trillion yuan, doubling its total of 2001. The figure represented 14-percent growth and accounted for one-eighth of the country's total economic rise.

Liang Guiquan, director of the Guangdong Academy of Social Science, said that while it will be easy for Guangdong to achieve its GDP target, the province will have to deal with numerous other problems over the next five years.

Liang predicted that the most difficult will be social, rather than economic, with medical and employment security, as well as education requiring the most attention.

(China Daily May 24, 2007)