Source: Xinhua

12-09-2008 08:53

Special Report:   Global Financial Crisis

BEIJING, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's annual Central Economic Work Conference opened here Monday to set tone for the economic development next year.

Observers believed the three-day event would give priority to efforts to maintain stable economic growth.

They reckoned in 2009, China would see more risks for worse economic slowdown, more struggling smaller businesses, grim export situation and arduous task of transformation of economic growth pattern.

"It is imperative for China to maintain an economic growth of at least 8 percent," said Zhuang Jian, senior economist with Asian Development Bank's China Resident Mission.

It was hard for China to bear the consequences of a too slow GDP growth, Zhuang added, citing bankruptcy of numerous enterprises, more migrant workers being laid off and difficulties for college graduates to find jobs.

China's macro-economic policies experienced a dramatic adjustment-- from "preventing economic overheating and curbing inflation" at the beginning of this year to "maintaining growth through expanding domestic demand" at present. In the first three quarters, the nation saw its GDP growth slowed to a single-digit rate for the first time over the past five years, thanks partly to macro-economic control efforts and the ongoing financial woes worldwide.

"The Chinese economy has suspended continuous heating and proceeded into a period of slow down," Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the macro economy department under the Development Research Center of the State Council, commented.

"The slowdown was worse than expected," said Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Data from the bureau showed that the country's GDP growth was 10.6 percent in the first quarter, 10.1 percent in the second, and9 percent in the third.

President Hu Jintao said at the end of November that the Chinese economy was pressurized by global economic downturn, obvious ebbing of demand from abroad and weakening of the country's traditional competitive edge.

"Impact from the international financial tsunami on the Chinese economy has begun to show up, and to deepen into various sectors of the real economy," said Wang Yiming, deputy head of the macro economic research institute of the National Development and Reform Commission.