China congress: Beijing will bring currency in line with market rates, Hu says "We should firmly maintain the strategic focus of boosting domestic demand, speed up the establishment of a long-term mechanism for increasing consumer demand, unleash the potential of individual consumption, increase investment at a proper pace, and expand the domestic market," Mr Hu's speech said. "We should develop a multi-level capital market, take steady steps to make interest rates and the renminbi exchange rate more market-based and promote the renminbi's convertibility under the capital account in due course," it added. While there was little fresh in the speech, economists said the reiterations were important given an economic downdraft that has seen growth slow for seven successive quarters and left 2012 on course for the lowest full year of growth since 1999 - albeit at a 7.7 percent clip that is the envy of developed economies. Because there's been so much talk about growth slowing in China, reiterating the target in this speech was important. But the numbers are not new news," Tim Condon, head of Asian economic research at ING in Singapore, told Reuters. China's leaders have, since the days of Deng Xiaoping's landmark reform programme in the late 1970s, pledged to double the size of the economy every 10 years. In fact, the economy has grown far faster, achieving an average annual increase of around 10 percent in the last three decades. In the current five year plan that runs from 2011 to 2015, the government is aiming for an average annual increase in GDP of 7 percent. The specific target for growth in 2012 is 7.5 percent, implying room for the economy cool and still achieve the overall target. Growth in 2011 was 9.2 percent.