China lowers 2015 growth target to 'around 7%': govt

China lowered its 2015 economic growth target to "around seven percent", the government said Thursday, as authorities attempt to set the world's second-largest economy on a more sustainable expansion path. The goal announced by Premier Li Keqiang comes after China's economy expanded 7.4 percent in 2014, the slowest pace in 24 years. Last year's target was "about 7.5 percent". China also lowered its target for annual inflation to "around three percent", according to the text of a "work report" Li was to give to the opening of the annual National People's Congress, the country's communist-controlled legislature. The lowering of the economic growth target was widely expected by economists and reflects the reality of a multi-year slowdown in the Asian giant that has seen it come off annual double-digit expansions that characterised its decades-long ascension. "Over the past year, the international and domestic environments faced by China in its development have been complicated and challenging," the text of the work report said, according to the state Xinhua news agency. "The road to global economic recovery has been rough, with many ups and downs, and the performance of the major economies has been divergent." The inflation target comes as annual inflation plunged to a more than five-year low of 0.8 percent in January, official data showed last month, fuelling fears the economy is on the brink of a deflationary spiral.