BEIJING — China’s premier said on Tuesday that his government would respond to an economic slowdown by cutting taxes, easing burdens on the private sector and giving markets a bigger role — diluting the heavily pro-state pronouncements and policies that critics have warned were scaring investors.

Calling 2019 a “crucial year” for China’s economy, Premier Li Keqiang, the second-ranking official in China after President Xi Jinping, laid out measures long supported by private businesses. Mr. Li’s annual report to the national legislature revived rhetoric about market solutions after the government faced growing criticism for favoring government initiatives and state-owned companies, squeezing out private enterprise.

“We will keep using market-oriented reforming thinking,” Mr. Li said in his report. “The government must act with resolve to hand matters it shouldn’t manage over to the market.”

But the specifics of his speech to the legislature did not go as far as domestic or foreign critics would have liked. And this year’s session of China’s Communist Party-controlled legislature, the National People’s Congress, underscored how much economic anxieties have come to dominate policy a year after Mr. Xi appeared politically indomitable.