"Problems in the real economy have their roots in a lack of innovation," said Zhou Guohui, deputy of the 12th National People's Congress and head of the provincial science and technology department of Zhejiang in east China.
He believed innovation highlighted developing new and high tech industries so as to open up more growth spaces, as well as transforming traditional industries with the information technology.
The reforms were challenging for such a developing economy as China, as it was turning into a leading first-class digital economy and the world's manufacturing powerhouse, Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of German giant Siemens, has said.
Apart from new technologies, innovation involved labor force retraining, he said, noting that Germans would like to share the experience for a smooth transition they went through in 1950s and 1960s.
"We are very eager to bring modern manufacturing software to Chinese manufacturing so they are more efficient, high quality and high scale," the Siemens CEO added.
The world expects to see a successful economic upgrading in China, because it is vital to China's growth, and in turn to global growth amid uncertainties largely from a sluggish global economic recovery and a surge in anti-globalization and protectionism in western countries.
"The planned growth level will help keep China's contribution to the global growth at around 30 percent, and this will help avert an economic depression worldwide," said Mihail Delyagin, director of the Russian Institute for Globalization Problems.
Indonesia's economist Yudhoyono Firmanzah, a former presidential economic adviser, said that as Indonesia's biggest trade partner, each one percent of China's GDP growth would be translated into 0.3 percent of that in the southeast Asian country.
A GREEN ECONOMIC UPGRADING
The government work report also holds environmental protection as a key factor in China's economic upgrading, to meet people's urgent demand for better environment, especially cleaner air.
Moreover, this serves as a driving force, NPC deputy Zhou said.
For example, economic mode changes entail cutbacks in coal consumption while working to improve energy efficiency. Official data showed a continuous fall in coal use in the past three years in China, where energy use was however up 1.4 percent only for a 6.7 percent growth last year.
China plans this year to close down, halt and delay coal-fired power capacity of at least 50 million kw in total, while quitting coal production capacity in excess of 150 million tons.
In a larger sense, this means China will contribute more to the global fight against climate change.
Macharia Munene, a Nairobi-based foreign relations scholar, praised the latest Chinese move to meet environmental challenges.
As part of innovation efforts, China is taking measures including use of green technologies to mitigate climate change and reduce air pollution, he told Xinhua recently.
China's economy is moving to "a lighter economy, a modern economy, and this is also reflected in the Chinese energy portfolio very much," Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, has said.
"I think some of the reforms, some of the steps China is making can also be an inspiration for other countries in the world, " he said, while noting a slowdown in energy demand growth as well as big and rapid leaps in the development of clean energies in China.
