The World Bank said the proposal made by the Communist Party of China (CPC) for the coming five years stresses more equitable development and more care for the environment, although economic development remains its top priority.

The bank said the Party's proposal, a guiding document for the country's social and economic development for the next five years, emphasizes that development should be "comprehensive, harmonious, and sustainable.

That implies "stable and relatively fast economic growth", and the need to "step up the transformation of the economic growth pattern" toward growth that is less energy, resource and capital intensive, more knowledge and innovation-driven, and more equally shared, the bank said in its just-published China Quarterly Update.

The 11th Five-Year Program constitutes "a policy shift" and deserves more attention, as it is a major departure form past plans that largely focused on growth as the key objective.

Although rapid growth remains a key objective, the "Harmonious Society" with the more balanced development to be achieved through a "Scientific Approach to Development" has taken center stage.

The program will have key guidelines and benchmarks as it had only two quantitative targets: "doubling per capita GDP of 2000 by2010" and "reducing energy intensity by 20 percent".

The proposal contains two other key objectives -- "construction of a new socialist countryside" and "structural upgrading of the economy through homegrown-innovation", it said.

The bank said "Doubling the per capita GDP of 2000 by 2010" should not be difficult.

With average growth of 9.5 percent over the 10th Five Year Planperiod, and modest population growth in the years ahead, the target will only require an average GDP growth of under 7 percent for the next five years, it said.

With major Chinese provincial areas formulating more growth targets, the bank said more moderate growth targets at the local level would be desirable for more balanced social and economic development.

"Reducing energy intensity of the economy by 20 percent" will be more ambitious, said the bank.

It said more emphasis on pricing of energy could help in reducing the energy intensity, and China will probably have to start taxing energy to incorporate the costs of environmental degradation and energy security.

It remains a challenge for China to protect vulnerable groups such as farmers during the process of raising energy prices, but it would need to be tackled sooner rather than later, said the bank.

The rapid growth in car ownership suggests that resistance to appropriate pricing of fuels will only increase over time.

Editor: Yan