URGENT: China sets 2023 economic growth target at around 5%

China set a gross domestic product growth target of around 5 percent for 2023 at the opening of an annual session of parliament Sunday, as the country tries to hasten a recovery from the economic damage caused by its now-ended “zero-COVID” policy.

The economic growth goal is lower than the target of around 5.5 percent for 2022 which was missed when the world’s second-biggest economy registered a 3.0 percent expansion from the previous year -- one of the slowest paces of growth in several decades -- due to the stringent antivirus measures and a subsequent explosion of infections that occurred u...