Economists have struck a cautious note on China's plan to lower the nation's inflation target from three to two percent in the coming year, citing prolonged deflationary pressure.

The comments came as Premier Li Qiang delivered his annual work report to the National People's Congress, setting out economic priorities for 2025, including a growth target of around five percent for the third year in a row.

In an interview with RTHK, Raymond Yeung, Greater China chief economist at ANZ Bank, said while he believes the five percent growth target is achievable, partly due to improved sentiment on the economy following recent technological breakthroughs, questions loom over the nation's persistently low consumer price growth.

"Obviously this number [two percent] is still way above the current inflation number, which was around 0.5 percent in January. But China is still under a strong deflationary pressure as the consumer price index has been inactive for almost 2.5 years," he told RTHK.

"The question is how the government can inflate the economy. Are they going to print more money? Are they going to have a fiscal policy intensity strong enough to push the domestic demand so to restore the economy back to inflation? There are still some open questions for us to ask."

However, the Hong Kong-based economist said the target suggests the authorities are dedicated to offering support to the economy.

Echoing Yeung, Tian Xuan, associate dean at Tsinghua University's school of finance, said in a group interview in Beijing that boosting public consumption is a vital growth engine for the economy this year, adding that policymakers have adopted a more proactive monetary policy with expanded fiscal support to shore up demand.

The fiscal deficit target this year, the Beijing-based economist noted, was raised to four percent from three percent last year, marking the highest level in three decades.

Authorities will issue a total of 1.3 trillion yuan (US$182 billion) worth of ultra-long special treasury bonds this year to spur growth, including 300 billion yuan on bonds to support consumer goods trade-in programmes, Tian said.

Yeung said the measures are a good signal, but warned the issue is whether local governments will properly implement the fiscal supports.

"The problems in the past few years were that the local government or state-owned companies, they are not really executing what the central government ask them to do. So there's a lot of hoarding of 'firepower' that has not been translated into economic growth," he said.

"So I think the focus is not just whether the target is four percent, it is about whether they are willing to execute at the local level, to execute those funds."

Separately, Yeung shrugged off concerns over the extra US tariffs on Chinese goods, noting that Chinese exports to the US steadily declined in recent years and now only account for about 13 percent of China's total exports.

"Our estimation is that every 10 percent increase in tariff rates will only drag down export growth by 0.5 percent of the GDP across several years, which means that every year the impact would be very, very minimal," he said.

"The problem of the Chinese economy is always domestic, and how to revive the domestic confidence, how to stabilise the property market, so that China is not going to go through the asset price deflation. That is more important than the US tariffs," Yeung added.