For quite some time, GDP was the overarching performance gauge in the eyes of certain local government officials. Sometimes this has led to a compromise in long-term benefits such as the environment and welfare for the short-term benefits of growth figures, an unsustainable development pattern that Xi has opposed.

"We still need GDP, but economic growth is not equivalent to development," Xi said in 2004, when he was the Party chief of Zhejiang province, an economic powerhouse in East China.

In 2005, Xi praised the efforts of a local village in Zhejiang to shut down polluting mines and cement plants, though the closure caused a drastic fall in the village's collective income.

"Do not pursue economic growth at the price of the environment, because such growth is not development," Xi told the villagers on one visit. Over a decade later, the village has become a popular tourist destination, winning the accolade National Ecological Cultural Village.