About half of China's cities and counties will no longer judged by their Gross Domestic Products performance, according to a senior official, which marks a major step by the country toward a more balanced and sustainable development model.

Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs, said at a Beijing forum Thursday that the nation's "ecologically vulnerable zones" and "key poverty counties" will be exempt from GDP evaluation next year.

His projection was based on a statement in the recently released reform roadmap after the Communist Party of China's Third Plenum, exempting the "limited development zones" and "key poverty counties" from years of GDP scrutiny.