China's Xi calls for development of a modern economy - Xinhua

It quoted Xi as telling a politburo meeting that China will deepen its supply-side structural reforms, quicken its pace in developing advanced manufacturing industry and push for integrated development of internet, big data and artificial intelligence with the real economy.

Resource allocations will be concentrated around the real economy, while government policies will be tilted in favour of boosting the real economy, Xi added at the politburo meeting.

Beijing is in its second year of a deleveraging campaign to reduce financial risks rooted in rapid build-up in debt and riskier types of financing.

Growth in China's economy picked up to 6.9 percent last year, the first annual acceleration since 2010 and easily beating the government's 2017 target of around 6.5 percent.

(This version of the story corrects paragraph 1 to show Xinhua report was on Wednesday, not Xi comment)

(Reporting by Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; Editing by Richard Borsuk)