Economic growth rates for both 1999 and 2000 are missing in a 16,000-word government work report delivered by Premier Zhu Rongji at the Third Session of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) Monday morning.

This is the first time in the history of New China that a government work report, released at an annual NPC session, goes without targeted growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

In his Report on the Work of the Government, Zhu details tasks for government work in 2000, but stops short of setting the GDP growth target for this year. China's annual GDP growth target used to be carried in government work reports.

In so doing, the Premier intends to encourage various departments, localities and the whole society to place emphasis on the quality of economic growth instead of merely pursuing quantity, according to reliable sources with the central government.

When delivering the report, Zhu time and again underlined the importance of "raising the overall quality of the national economy " and "boosting economic efficiency." Meanwhile, he repudiated problems like bureaucracy, formalism, falsification and exaggeration which he described as "rampant."

The sources said the lack of GDP growth rates is not to negate them, since they are, after all, important indices of the national economy and a leading yardstick in evaluating the work of the government.

What Premier Zhu prefers is nothing but "real stuff" that holds water, the sources said. "People's welfare cannot be enhanced and social wealth enriched without improvement in the quality and efficiency of the economy," he added.