Hu Jintao sets target of doubling incomes by 2020
President disappoints those hoping for political reform, saying the Communist Party will never take the 'evil route of changing its colour'
The Communist Party aims to double average household incomes on the mainland by 2020, party chief Hu Jintao said yesterday at the opening of a pivotal party congress that will usher in a new generation of leaders.
He insisted the party's firm political control was the key to achieving that target.
In his swansong speech before he passes the post of party general secretary to Xi Jinping next week, at the end of the week-long congress, Hu set the tone for the country's development in the coming decade: embrace economic reform but watch out for any attempt to copy Western-style democracy.
In a push to cement his political legacy, Hu listed his "historic achievements", with his pet theory - the scientific concept of development, enshrined in the party constitution five years ago - topping the list.
Despite mounting criticism over the country's political stagnation and his obsession with maintaining the status quo, Hu appeared confident the party would continue to thrive as long as it continued to deliver high economic growth rates similar to the past two decades.
Such growth has become a source of legitimacy for the party, with leaders going back to the days of Deng Xiaoping's landmark reform programme in the late 1970s pledging to double the size of the economy every 10 years. In fact, gross domestic product has grown far faster, achieving an average annual increase of around 10 per cent for the past three decades.