Inside the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square, a military band played Mao-era revolutionary songs as the top officials filed on to the stage.
Above them, on the ceiling, a huge red star.
Row upon row of dark-suited deputies nodded on attentively, applauding their premier at regular intervals, an exercise in synchronised page-turning as they followed his speech.
President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang
With the architecture, and the stilted choreography, it could have been any of several decades past, but what the deputies were listening to was very different from days gone by.
The credit ratings agency Moody's had just downgraded the outlook for China's economy from stable to negative, and the premier warned of a "difficult battle" ahead as he set a new lower growth target for 2016.
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Li Keqiang said the target GDP growth range for the next 12 months would be 6.5-7%, down from "around 7%" last year, and the lowest in more than a quarter of a century.
"China will face more and tougher problems and challenges in its development this year, so we must be fully prepared to fight a difficult battle," he said, at the opening of the country's annual parliamentary session.
"Downward pressure on the economy is growing. Domestically, problems and risks that have been building up over the years are becoming more evident."
He pledged to address overcapacity in the steel and coal industry, tackle SOEs (vast, often inefficient state-owned enterprises) and shut down "zombie enterprises" - companies being kept afloat by cheap loans from state banks.
All of which sounds positive, and analysts agree these things need to happen, but the reality could be very painful.
A government official said last week that 1.8 million workers would have to be laid off in the steel and coal industries - about 15% of the workforce - to meet the target.
Other estimates have put the real figure at closer to six million.
As the Chinese economy slows down,
strikes and worker protests are surging - and there will be concerns in some quarters that a sudden rise in unemployment could lead to social unrest, and the kind of instability the Communist Party leadership fears.
Local officials may therefore be reluctant to put these plans into action.
Mr Li himself emphasised the need to "maintain a balance between ensuring steady growth and making structural adjustments".
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The National People's Congress is China's annual legislative session.
Billed as the world's largest parliament, in truth it is more of a ceremonial occasion, with delegates routinely approving proposals with near unanimous votes.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the outlook from the delegates we spoke to as they filed out was resolutely positive.
"This is a pragmatic and honest report," Li Songquan, the People's Representative from Yunnan Province, told us.
"Also an inspiring one, I feel very excited about it."
Yang Jiapeng, the representative from Sichuan, said: "I'm full of confidence. Our economy, defence and every other aspects will reach a new high."
Others were even more breathless in their analysis.
"It's an exhilarating report. It's a mobilisation order," said Beijing delegate Zhu Liangyu. "I completely agree with it."
After a week of heavy pollution, miraculously the sky above the Great Hall had cleared, red flags billowing against the blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
China's Communist Party leaders must wish the economy was as easy to control.
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