Reform policies chart steady path for China in challenging intl environment: US expert

NEW YORK - China's "wisely thought-out" reform polices chart "a steady path forward" for its economy in a challenging international environment, a renowned US expert on China has said.

"The Chinese government's market-friendly and market deepening initiatives as well as its emphasis on counter-cyclical macro-economic policy to ensure stable aggregate demand, are wisely thought out policies," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The scholar said the recent annual Central Economic Work Conference made useful decisions that will "serve the economy and country well, as it charts a steady path forward in a challenging international economic environment."

One of China's significant achievements, he noted, is that it "has managed to maintain stable economic growth over the past 5 difficult years without taking recourse to massive stimulus measures."

"Foremost, this has been because of economic reform measures, notably the supply-side reforms, market access measures and financial de-risking measures. Fiscal policy has also been modestly proactive," he said.

China has also undertaken market deepening initiatives that incentivize the private sector and stimulate its further development. Gupta said this also serves as "an automatic economic stabilization mechanism for the broader economy when the state sector is unable, due to budgetary tightening, to make the necessary public investments."

"The more China reforms its domestic markets and thereby deepens its consumption market as an autonomous driver of domestic growth, the less it will have to worry about the darker shadows in the international economic environment," Gupta said.