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BEIJING — President Xi Jinping of China announced on Tuesday that the Communist Party and the national government had set a 6,5 percent target for annual economic growth from 2016 to 2020.

The announcement, an apparent attempt to temper expectations that China’s slowing economy will rebound to anything near the double-digit growth of recent decades, came as the party released the broad outlines of proposals for its next five-year plan.

That blueprint of its economic development was discussed at a recent party plenary session in Beijing and is expected to be completed next spring by the National People’s Congress, a legislature that grants proforma approval to party policy.

In declaring the target of 6,5 percent, Mr Xi was reiterating a figure that Prime Minister Li Keqiang had used in a speech on Sunday in South Korea.

The leaders say the target must be met for China’s gross domestic product and per capita income in 2020 to be double what they were in 2010.

“China aims to narrow the income gap and raise the proportion of the middle-class income population in the next five years,” according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency, on the proposals for the next five-year plan, which will be the 13th in the party’s history.

China’s gross domestic product per capita is about $7,800, the Xinhua report said, citing figures released on Tuesday. With nearly 1,4 billion people, China is the world’s most populous country. The current development plan, which runs from 2011 to the end of this year, set an annual growth target of about 7 percent.

The party said the proposals for the new plan aimed to, among other things, eradicate rural poverty (an “arduous task”); promote inclusion of the Chinese currency, the renminbi, in the International Monetary Fund’s basket of currencies; and attract foreign investment while encouraging more Chinese businesses to invest overseas.

The party also said that China would set up a “Green Development Fund” to promote clean industry and sustainable growth.

The proposals emphasised the need to strengthen conservative party ideology in public realms, an important goal under Mr Xi. For example, they called for cultivating a positive culture on the Internet and cleansing the online environment.

At the same time, the plan said China wanted to improve Internet speeds — a task seemingly incompatible, at least on a global level, with the country’s Great Firewall system of web censorship.

The proposals were approved after about 200 full members of the party’s Central Committee held a meeting for four days last month in a heavily guarded hotel in western Beijing.

Last Thursday, during the session, the party announced that it was changing its one-child policy of family planning to a two-child policy in an attempt to stimulate economic growth.

The new policy is also expected to be approved by the National People’s Congress next spring and will go into effect afterward, although economists and demographers say they do not expect a big spike in the national birthrate.

On Tuesday, some critics expressed scepticism about whether any five-year plan could address the evolving complexity of China.

“Rarely do people compare the plan and the eventual reality,” said Mao Yushi, chairman of the Unirule Institute of Economics in Beijing. “Not one five-year plan has unfolded as planned. Why? Because you can’t predict the problems five years from now.”

The Chinese economy grew 6,9 percent in the third quarter, relative to a year earlier, according to data released in October. That figure, while robust compared with those of advanced economies, was the slowest for China since the global financial crisis of 2009, and some economists say the economy is actually much weaker.

Mr Xi and Mr Li have said they want to shift China away from heavy industry and high investment toward a larger service sector and more consumer spending. But recent economic shakiness has fed doubts about whether they can smoothly manage that transition.

The annual plenary sessions of the Central Committee are part of the ritualised cycle of Chinese politics, giving top leaders a platform to win elite endorsement for their policies and to settle disagreements.

Most famously, a plenum in late 1978 sealed Deng Xiaoping’s re-emergence as a dominant leader and opened the way to market overhauls that transformed the economy over the next decade.

Before the latest meeting, party propaganda depicted Mr Xi, who is also the general secretary of the party, as a visionary in the mold of Deng.

“It is consistent with the broader trend of the C.C.P. General secretary acting as the ‘chairman of everything’ and ensuring his personal stamp is on every policy,” said Scott Kennedy, a researcher on Chinese economic policy at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has followed the drafting of the new five-year plan.

Although China has shed many of the top-down economic controls of the Maoist era, the five-year plan still plays an important role in setting long-term goals, Mr Kennedy said.

After the National People’s Congress endorses the plan next spring, ministries and agencies will issue more detailed strategies for making changes regarding energy, the environment, trade and other areas.

“The plan serves as the most authoritative statement on the state’s priorities,” Mr Kennedy said. “The party, government agencies, financial institutions and companies then spend a great deal of effort aligning themselves with these priorities.” — AP