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TIANJIN,China-Premier Wen Jiabao expressed confidence on Saturday that China could maintain fast growth and said this was the greatest contribution it could make to help the world weather the current financial crisis. Markets are uneasy that the economy is slowing sharply under the impact of drooping demand for China's exports and tight credit conditions that have taken a toll on the property sector, which accounts for nearly a quarter of fixed-asset investment.But Wen, addressing a World Economic Forum meeting in the northern Chinese port city of Tianjin, struck an optimistic note."We have full confidence and the ability to overcome all sorts of difficulties in order to keep our economy growing in a sound and fast manner for a longer time to come," he said.Wen said China would follow flexible, prudent policies to tackle the fallout of the still-unfolding crisis, widely billed as the most serious since the Great Depression."What we can do now is to maintain China's strong, stable and relatively fast growth and avoid big fluctuations. That is the biggest contribution we can make to the world economy under the current circumstances," he said.China grew a blistering 11.9 percent in 2007, its fifth straight year of double-digit growth, prompting the central bank to tighten monetary policy late last year to curb inflation.The policy has largely worked. Consumer inflation has fallen to 4.9 percent in the year to August from a 12-year peak of 8.7 percent in February, while gross domestic product growth slowed to 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier.To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
