Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said the government’s mix of active fiscal policies and relaxed monetary settings must stay in place while economic growth faces domestic and external weaknesses, official media said yesterday.
Visiting eastern Jiangsu Province over recent days, Wen stressed the government’s continued commitment to these policies, indicating that no shift is looming.
“We are persisting with implementing active fiscal policies and appropriately relaxed monetary policies because we still face many hardships and challenges, the international economic outlook remains unclear and pressure from falling external demand remains heavy,” Wen said, according to the central government’s Web site. “The impetus for self-sustaining growth in the economy is still not strong ... Therefore, the direction of macro-economic policy cannot change.”
Chinese officials face domestic and foreign investors jittery over the direction of policy and Wen’s words add to a recent drumbeat of comments stressing that the policy recipe remains unchanged.
Senior Chinese economic officials on Friday also quashed market speculation that Beijing might be starting to unwind its loose monetary policies introduced to prop up growth in the world’s third-largest economy,
The Shanghai stock market fell 4.4 percent this week, its biggest loss in five months, as investors fretted that the central bank was being less generous in flooding the banking system with cash to support spending and investment.
Figures for last month out this week are likely to show that China’s recovery is on course. GDP grew 7.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier.
But the Chinese Communist Party, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in power on Oct. 1, is leaving nothing to chance as long as the global economy remains in the doldrums, depriving China of the export demand that has been a big driver of growth in the past few years.
“Some industries and businesses are still in some hardship and the problem of excess production capacity is extremely striking,” Wen said.
Taiwanese Olympic badminton men’s doubles gold medalist Wang Chi-lin (王齊麟) and his new partner, Chiu Hsiang-chieh (邱相榤), clinched the men’s doubles title at the Yonex Taipei Open yesterday, becoming the second Taiwanese team to win a title in the tournament. Ranked 19th in the world, the Taiwanese duo defeated Kang Min-hyuk and Ki Dong-ju of South Korea 21-18, 21-15 in a pulsating 43-minute final to clinch their first doubles title after teaming up last year. Wang, the men’s doubles gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics, partnered with Chiu in August last year after the retirement of his teammate Lee Yang
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
RSS