China to Build Up Strength for Long-Term High Growth

China's economy has shown rebound since the beginning of the year 2000, and the strength for a long- time high growth is going to be built up in the coming years, a senior economist said Saturday.

The current strong economic recovery in Asia will bring up a new period of high rise in China's exports, Zhang Yunling, director of the APEC Policy Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told Xinhua in an exclusive interview when he was attending the Asian Vision 21 Conference, which was held by the Harvard University Asia Center in Hong Kong from May 18 to 20.

Thanks to restructuring policies taken by the Chinese central government in the past two years to stimulate demand and curb deflation, the country's economic efficiency has been improved with a sharp increase in profit and decline in loss in the first quarter this year, Zhang said.

For the future vision, he said that the high growth of the sectors relating to New Economy, the future accession into WTO, fast urbanization and new effort in developing the country's western parts are all built-in positive factors for China's future economic growth.

The growth rate of China's gross domestic production has been downward since the central government introduced a continuously tightened policy aiming at controlling inflation in 1993, Zhang said.

He attributed the slowdown to a long-lasted, tightened policy to control inflation, long-time over production rooted in the structural problems, and weakness in domestic demand caused by urban reforms and income decline of rural areas, as well as impacts of the Asian financial crisis.

Zhang, also director of the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies of the CASS, stressed the important role of China in the future development of Asia's economy. "China has shown its strong interest in participating regional cooperation though it still has reservations in real institutional establishment," he said.

With the share of foreign trade in GDP as high as 40 percent, China has become more and more integrated into the world market, Zhang said, adding that the real progress is expected in trade and investment liberalization, monetary cooperation, as well as cooperation in energy, environment, human resources and e-commerce.



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