SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said economic growth of slightly higher or lower than 7.5 percent this year would be acceptable as long as there was higher employment and wages, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Thursday.
Economic growth should create jobs, raise people's incomes, save energy and be good for the environment, Xinhua quoted Li as saying at an economic symposium on Tuesday.
Li said Beijing would keep its targeted macro-control policies and allow the market to play a bigger role, the report said.
The premier has recently vowed that the economy would grow by at least 7.5 percent in 2014, surprising many market watchers after a weak start to the year and reinforcing expectations of more government assistance to come.
China's economy grew 7.5 percent in April-June from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said on Wednesday, just ahead of a median forecast of 7.4 percent in a Reuters poll.
(Reporting by Kazunori Takada; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
