The government has ordered a sharp increase in the construction

It is but one sign of the slightly dimmer economic outlook for China that Premier Wen Jiabao forecast on Monday, when he reduced the government’s minimum growth target for in 2012 to what would be, if growth fell that far, the lowest rate in more than two decades.Burberry sunglasses, burberry scarves, burberry shoes 2012 outlet.

Construction sites across Guangzhou used to be floodlit, so that work could continue through the night on the forests of new residential and office towers reaching toward the stars. But now, during a nationwide real estate downturn, builders are not starting projects or scrambling to finish ones already under way, so there is little need for night-work illumination.

The Chinese economy, after nearly three decades of rapid, almost uninterrupted growth, seems to be settling down to a still strong but less blistering pace. But some sectors are struggling, including exports and luxury residential real estate construction.

Premier Wen said in his annual report to the National People’s Congress on Monday morning in Beijing that the government had scaled its economic growth target back to 7.5 percent this year, down from the 8 percent that Beijing has set as a minimum growth target in recent years. If growth does come in at only 7.5 percent, it will be the slowest pace in 22 years.

As Mr. Wen delivered his lengthy report, broadcast nationally and watched on countless TV sets in diners and shops here in Guangzhou, the mood at construction sites and factory districts seemed more downbeat than usual.

Shop clerks in a wholesale market complained about the scarcity of customers. At a factory gate, workers said that few jobs were available except at the minimum wage. And at an employment office, the jobless fretted that even if they found work, they would have little hope of buying apartments typically priced beyond their means.

Su Weizhong and three other clerks late Monday morning stood at a desk with little to do at a plumbing supplies store in the wholesale market.

“A year ago, there were people in every shop, looking and asking about the prices,” Mr. Su said. “Projects are finishing, but there are absolutely no new projects this year.”

With China having been the world’s main growth engine in recent years, a slowdown is hardly welcome news burberry shoes for the global economy. Neither is the prospect of a restive population — a continual worry for Beijing, if it cannot meet the aspirations of a rising middle class.

In some ways, though, the United States could actually benefit from slower Chinese growth, many economists believe. China’s appetite for commodities has helped push up prices for everything from oil to iron ore. But those price pressures could ease, as China shifts toward an emphasis on slower but more sustainable economic expansion.

And while less rapid growth could dampen China’s demand for imports, that would have little impact on most American businesses. Exports to China represented just 0.6 percent of the United States’ economic output last year.

At its peak, in 2007, China’s economy grew at an annual pace of 14.2 percent. As recently as 2010, it was 10.4 percent. Now, though, the government is trying to guide the economy toward a minimum average annual growth of 7 percent through 2015.

Slower growth partly reflects a government attempt to shift the economy more toward personal consumption, with less emphasis on exports and investment in big domestic construction and infrastructure projects. But government officials have given a series of signals since mid-February that growth may be slowing more than they intended.

The central bank on Feb. 18 gave permission to state-controlled commercial banks to lend a larger share of their assets. The next week the commerce ministry announced that it was drafting plans to increase tax rebates for exporters, burberry ties as financial troubles have weakened demand in Europe, China’s largest export market. The commerce ministry also said it was looking for ways to reverse a slump in foreign investment this winter from Europe and the United States.

Shortly after Mr. Wen spoke on Monday, dozens of would-be workers waiting for job interviews milled around outside the gates of the large Liteon Guangzhou electronics manufacturing complex. Standing behind them were clumps of employment agents who had brought the workers in buses and were hoping for commissions from Liteon for helping to find labor.

Urban minimum wages are rising briskly, particularly here in Guangzhou and elsewhere in the industrial Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China. And they are supposed to keep rising 13 percent a year under Beijing’s five-year plan. But many of the job applicants and their friends from nearby factories said that they did not feel they were benefiting from the labor shortage.

“It’s hard to find a good job; it’s easy to find just any job,” said Gao Qing, a 21-year-old who was hoping for a quality-inspection position. Many of the available jobs pay only the local minimum wage, around $200 a month before overtime, and many of the jobs are at small factories with questionable reputations for paying workers on time.

And some of the smaller factories have reduced or eliminated traditional subsidies for workers’ food, housing and other benefits to offset the cost of higher minimum wages, Ms. Gao and other workers said.

At a downtown Guangzhou employment office Monday afternoon, Ma Yaoguang, an unemployed security guard, said he worried how he would afford rent of $30 to $45 a month for a tiny room even if he could find a job. Echoing a worry for tens of millions of young Chinese, Mr. Ma added that, “I cannot even dream of owning an apartment.”

Exorbitant real estate prices are a national preoccupation. A 1,000-square-foot apartment in central Guangzhou costs about the equivalent of $300,000 — nearly 50 times the starting annual salary of a new college graduate with a marketable skill like computer engineering, although graduates who do find career-track jobs typically start receiving regular raises.

The government is trying to engineer a decline in real estate prices to improve affordability, without damaging investor confidence so much that prices tip into a multiyear downward spiral of the sort seen in the United States. Down payments have been raised to 40 percent or more and many regulations discourage investors from buying more than one home.Cheap burberry - designer bags, shoes, accessories, clothing outlet 2012.

Government and private indexes of residential real estate prices in China suffer from many methodological flaws. But they now consistently show slightly weaker prices, along with a nose dive in transactions as buyers wait for further price declines.

Two Guangzhou real estate brokers said that prices here had dropped by up to 20 percent over the last year. The nationwide slowdown in real estate cost thousands of agents their jobs and led to the closing of hundreds of brokerage offices.

“There is no buying sentiment in the market right now,” said a broker here who gave only his last name, Leung, because he feared retaliation for publicly questioning government policies.

The government has ordered a sharp increase in the construction of low-income housing. But in Guangzhou and elsewhere in China, there is considerable cynicism about whether political connections will be needed to buy such apartments, which are supposed to be priced at a little less than half the square-foot rate of commercial-market properties.

Exports have also been weak this winter, a trend expected to continue in February statistics due out later this week, after adjusting for the Chinese New Year. Zhu Wei, the export manager at the High Hope Zhongding Corporation, a maker of festive lights and lanterns in Nanjing, said in a recent telephone interview that orders were down 30 percent from a year ago and still sliding, mainly because of the slack economy in Europe.

Chinese business leaders complain that steeply rising wages and increasingly stringent labor and environmental cheapburberryoutlet2012 regulations are driving up their costs and undermining their nation’s competitiveness, said Stanley Lau, the deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, a trade association whose members employ 10 million people in the Pearl River Delta region.

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