China's economy faces a harsher and more complex environment as the global economic crisis deepens in severity, Zhou Xiaochuan, the country's central bank governor, said on Friday. "The international financial crisis is still spreading, and the risk of global recession is increasing," Zhou said in a statement on the website of the People's Bank of China.
"China's economic development will face a harsher and more complicated situation," he added. Premier Wen Jiabao earlier this week said China's economic data gave some grounds for confidence in an early recovery for the world's third-largest economy despite the woes of its trading partners.
Using oft-repeated phrasing, Zhou also said that Chinese monetary policy was focused on delivering "stable and quite fast" economic growth. China on Wednesday revised up 2007 gross domestic product growth to 13.0 percent, but economists think the country slipped to about 9 percent last year and still lower in 2009.
Data this week showed there had been an explosion of bank lending in December in response to government efforts to pump up the economy, giving investors something to cheer even as trade figures registered a second straight month of falling exports and imports.