金融英语阅读：China seeks bigger int’l role
At an annual top-level economic conference that concluded Sunday, Chinese authorities demonstrated their determination for a greater and more decisive role in the post-crisis international community, while also pledging to curb excessive government spending.And with national inflation soaring to a 28-month high in November, the top leadership also vowed to focus on managing inflation expectations in 2011, according to a government statement.
The global economy is likely to resume growing next year, though many uncertainties will remain, it said.
Participants at the meeting agreed that the country should further cultivate its growth areas, thereby strengthening its role in the transformation of the world economic regime.
The meeting also stressed steady growth in fiscal revenue, as well as austerity in government-level administrative spending, adding that local governments should strengthen their debt-management efforts.
"China will further improve the Renminbi's exchange rate formation mechanism and keep the yuan basically stable and at a reasonable and balanced level," it said.
"The priority is to handle the relationship between maintaining steady and relatively fast economic growth, economic restructuring and managing inflation expectations in an active and stable way," the statement said.
November's inflation rate of 5.1 percent was fueled mostly by soaring food prices, according to data released Saturday.
The three-day Central Economic Work Conference, which was presided over by President Hu Jintao and attended by Premier Wen Jiabao and other top leaders, resulted in the agreement to give priority to stabilizing prices next year.
On Friday, the day before the inflation data was released, the country's central bank said it would raise banks' reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percent, effective December 20. It will be the sixth such hike this year to ease inflationary pressure.
The meeting also said China will seek to accelerate its strategic economic restructuring next year in an effort to shift from an over-dependence on exports and an investment in industries to boosting private consumption and relying on the domestic market.
China's economy grew 9.6 percent in the third quarter of this year, slowing from a 10.3 percent increase in the second quarter and an 11.9 percent surge in the first quarter.
Wan Jun, an economist from the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told the Global Times that China has strived in recent years to maintain economic growth while restructuring the economy in an effort to combat the global financial crisis. Now, he said, it is time for the government to take the soaring inflation into consideration in its policymaking.
"In this case, it is a challenge to the government to practice the art of balance - the balance among GDP growth, economic restructuring and curbing inflation," he said.
The government at this year's Fifth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee did not provide any specific targets for next year's growth, Wan said.
"If we try to maintain a moderate growth in GDP rather than a rapid one, then main-taining economic growth does not run contrary to curbing inflation," he said.
Yuan Gangming, director of the Macroeconomic Research Center at the Economics In-stitute of the CASS, told the Global Times that the government should be cautious when adopting inflationary controls, which could slow the country's economy. He also noted that maintaining stable economic growth will top the agenda for policymakers next year.
"Another economic challenge China will face in 2011 will lie in its real estate regulatory policy, which proved to be a failure this year," Yuan said, adding that without a proper balance of measures, China's economy will face catastrophic consequences.
The country also decided at the meeting to pursue a "prudent" monetary policy and "proactive" fiscal stance, reaffirming a statement announced at the beginning of the month by the CPC Political Bureau, which said it is pursuing a shift to a "prudent" monetary policy from its previous "relatively loose" stance.
Separately, China is mulling a reform of its income tax system next year, aiming to reduce taxes levied on low- and middle-income people, the Economic Observer reported.
金融英语阅读：China seeks bigger int’l role
The specific measures haven't been announced yet, but a focus will be on reducing the levels of tax rates and easing the tax pressure on low-income earners, while increasing levies on high earners, Jia Kang, director of the Research Institute for Fiscal Science at the Ministry of Finance, told the Global Times Sunday.Michael Pettis, a Beijing-based finance professor with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, "One of the reasons here to cut taxes for low- and middle-income people is to reverse that transfer," he said, adding that the tax reduction will also increase families' disposable income and spur domestic consump-tion, which is quite low.
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