How fast the Chinese economy grows should no longer be regarded as a barometer of its health.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will set the GDP growth target for the economy when he delivers the Government Work Report at the 12th National People's Congress on Wednesday.

Many expect this will be set at 7.5 percent - as it was last year - but if it happened to be 7 percent instead, there might not be a negative reaction from the markets, as might have been the case in the past.

China may still contribute 30 percent to global GDP growth, but what is increasingly more important is the quality of that growth.

Many now agree that China's growth model - which has served the country well over the past 30 years but has been so reliant on investment, particularly in infrastructure - has a limited future.

It has perhaps been made more limited by the hangover from the unprecedented 4 trillion yuan ($651 billion) injection into the economy to ameliorate the collapse in global demand for Chinese goods in the wake of the financial crisis in 2009.

This move - while a lifeline at the time - has led to significant imbalances in the economy, leading to excessivelocal government debt and an overbloated banking system.

It is clear the government fully recognizes the need for reform.

At the Third Plenum meeting in November, the government outlined measures that, if implemented successfully, could lead to a significant rebalancing of the economy.

This included proposed State-owned enterprise reform and steps toward interest-rate liberalization so that capital can be more efficiently priced and allocated within the economy.

Growth remains a sensitive issue. The government embarked on a so-called mini -stimulus, a series of targeted investments, which eased nerves about growth slipping in the middle of last year, but it might not be able to keep doing this.

China may still be a long way from the "roads to nowhere" spending that precipitated Japan's crash in the late 1980s, but its room to maneu ver is becoming more restricted.

Some sayurbanization , which requires huge further infrastructure building, holds the key to China's continued growth for the next two decades. That may be true, but the flux of people to the cities still has to produce a return or else it will only serve to wrack up China's overall debt.

The problem for policymakers is that it is never clear what particular debt level might trigger an investment bust leading to a collapse of growth. It can be different between countries, with developed nations often better able to service high debt levels. High levels of debt in the US should not be a comfort.

Some economists, such as Michael Pettis, professor of finance at the Guanghua School of Management, argues in his recent book Avoiding The Fall: China's Economic Restructuring that China might run into problems within two to three years if it doesn't reform. Others say it could be 10 years away or even further.

Trigger points, often based on changes of sentiment, don't usually introduce themselves. Few foretold the current financial crisis even though many warning signs were there.

To remove the risk, the Chinese government has to rebalance the economy to one much more reliant on consumption than investment. Household consumption is currently just 35 percent of GDP, compared to 70 percent in the United States.

How to achieve such a change is far from clear. Many economists dismiss consumption-led growth as a concept since the ability to consume can only be derived from the success of an economy, but consumption, whether leading the economy or not, has to be achieved.

Measures such as better welfare provisions making people more confident about spending, as well as reform of hukou , or household registration, so that migrant workers can live normal lives with their families and, importantly, spend rather than remit money, are part of that equation.

The other vital area isfinancial reform , now on trial in theShanghai Free Trade Zone .

China's private enterprises need access to finance. The economy cannot be reliant on State-owned enterprises that can afford to be inefficient by benefiting from cheap loans because Chinese savers get poor returns on their deposits.

This is why economic growth will no longer be the main priority or talking point as Chinese leaders discuss the future of the country.