China has reiterated that its economy will maintain a rapid pace of growth next year while 2004 gross domestic product (GDP) will expand by at least nine percent, state press reported Monday. Increasing urbanisation, industrialisation and rising private consumption should continue to drive the world's fastest growing major economy in 2005, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Zheng Jingping was cited as saying.
For the three months to September, China's economy grew 9.1 percent compared with a year earlier, after 9.8 percent in the first quarter and 9.6 percent in the second.
At the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum summit in the Chilean capital Santiago, Chinese President Hu Jintao said the mainland's booming economy would grow by "around nine percent". Zheng, speaking to the official Xinhua news agency, said China's international trade would remain balanced, despite an expected small surplus over the long haul, and investment flows were expected to advance at a healthy pace. During the January to October period, China maintained double-digit growth in foreign direct investment (FDI), with contracted FDI at 118.99 billion dollars, up 34.19 percent compared to a year ago. In the meantime, sensible macro-economic controls, although difficult to implement, would lay a solid foundation for the country's long-term economic development, Zheng said.
He added, however, that restricting growth in infrastructure would remain a challenge. Beijing has been struggling to bring fixed-asset investment under control with a series of lending restrictions including an interest rate increase last month, the first in nearly a decade.
In the first 10 months of the year, fixed-asset investment jumped 29.5 percent to 4.35 trillion yuan (525 billion dollars).
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