China reassured Asia on Saturday its racing economy would slow without crashing, making some of its strongest and most confident comments yet on a subject that has unnerved global markets.
The remarks suggested the country remained uninterested in higher interest rates, the most obvious braking mechanism that it has so far avoided taking.
"China will definitely achieve a soft landing," Vice Finance Minister Li Yong told Reuters when asked whether the country would take stronger action to cool its economy, such as raising interest rates.
Finance Minister Jin Renqing later told reporters he too was confident of a soft landing, and he pointed to a recent fall in steel prices as evidence.
Li said: "The macroeconomic cooling measures that we have put in place up to now are extremely effective and will take hold step by step."
The ministers spoke on the South Korean resort island of Cheju, where the Asian Development Bank was meeting.
China's economy grew 9.7 percent between the first quarters of 2003 and 2004, driven by torrid expansion in investment and lending. Economists estimate that growth between the two latest quarters was much faster, possibly a 16 percent annualised rate.
Analysts fear that businesses have been borrowing too much to invest in production capacity whose output they may be unable to profitably sell, inviting a bust.
Prices on global financial markets have swung widely as investors first bet on strong and sustainable Chinese growth and then fretted that the country, now an important source of world economic demand, could slow dramatically.
China's economy has become a key issue for its Asian neighbours, which now rely heavily on its demand for their exports.
Li's comments went further than recent statements by other senior officials, who have typically shied away from predicting a soft landing as a certainty. They have, however, vowed to take any measures necessary to bring the economy under control.
The vice finance minister brushed off a suggestion that the economy in general was running too fast for its own good.
"It's not the entire economy that is overheating," Li said, echoing the view of many economists. "We see economic overheating only in some industries."
China has singled out an array of sectors that are most obviously experiencing over-investment, including steel, cement, aluminium, property development and automobiles.
The authorities have restricted lending to those industries and have told local officials not to create new development zones for manufacturing-intensive activity.
The government has ordered banks to hold more money in reserve, leaving less available for loans, but it has so far avoided imposing higher interest rates, which many analysts think could kill indebted state firms.
Beijing has also held the yuan's exchange rate at around 8.28 per dollar, a level that has attracted criticism from the United States and others as too low and giving Chinese exporters an unfair advantage.
Investors have speculated that the authorities would lift the value of the yuan, partly to hold back the economy.
But Jin reaffirmed to reporters China's commitment to maintaining the exchange rate, saying it was vital for economic growth for itself and the rest of Asia.
"Preserving the basic stability of the yuan's exchange rate is vital for the future stable growth of China and also for Asia's economy as a whole," Jin said. China has said it would eventually loosen ties on the currency, and Jin repeated that commitment on Saturday.
Standard & Poor's said on Friday that a Chinese soft landing was more likely than a hard one. The official one-year lending rate is 5.31 percent.
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