After thirty years of breathtaking, non-stop fast track development that has catapulted China to number two in the world's economic league table, it is now some drowsy hamlets, once obscured by the aura of record-breaking development tales, that are being hailed as tranquil sanctuaries for people seeking a less frenetic existence.

When Wu Weiguo touts the benefits of slowing down, he seems an alien to the mighty club of wooers of "a hen's rump" . This Chinese transliteration of GDP has been coined by netizens to ridicule officials who take the English abbreviation for the term gross domestic product as their pet phrase.

Though Gaochun County that Wu governs boasts one of the richest villages in Jiangsu Province, a vital economic hub in east China, the Communist Party secretary is now more interested in adopting the brand 'Slow City' for the county.

Nestled in the booming Yangtze River Delta with the provincial capital Nanjing and the metropolis of Shanghai as its neighbors, the tranquil and sparsely populated Yaxi Township under Gaochun remained almost unknown until last year when it was awarded the title of China's first 'Slow City' by Cittaslow International, an organization that advocates sustainable ways of life.

Slowness, if not a shame, would have been the last thing local officials would trumpet in the past when they were keen to exert all efforts to compete for higher GDP growth as one of their major political achievements for promotion.

However, Yaxi may now become a model for a slower developing society as China encourages and embraces a sustainable way for economic growth while it tries to cool inflation amid the global recession crisis.

China lowered its average annual economic growth expectation for the five years from 2011 to 2015 to seven percent in a development blueprint published in March, compared with an average annual target of eight percent for the previous period.

The initiative signaled that China intends to focus on the transformation of the economic growth model in the next five years, or even a longer period of time, to rely more on technological innovation and improved efficiency. Premier Wen Jiabao made this clear at a press conference during the annual parliamentary session.

As a result, a number of provincial and municipal governments have also lowered their sights and ambitions for GDP growth. These include Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, which are dubbed as the country's economic engines.

Mostly as a result of macro-control levers, China's economy has seen a minimal but gradual drop in its growth curve this year from 9.7 percent in the first quarter to 9.5 percent in the second and then 9.1 percent in the third quarter.

The good news for Wu Weiguo came when the municipal government of Nanjing, which administers Gaochun, decided in August to abolish the GDP-pegged governance evaluation regime for its six suburban districts and counties.

The new evaluation system takes employment, residents' income and other indices concerning people's livelihood as major factors, and stipulates that a chief official would fail the evaluation if major work safety accidents, serious environmental pollution and protests involving a mass participation of people take place within his jurisdiction.