Investment overseas and imports a priority
(China Daily)Updated: 2006-12-08 08:53
The government will continue the strategy of "going global" by encouraging
overseas investment, officials said.
China's direct investment overseas
was about US$12.3 billion last year, according to the 2006 World Investment
Report by the United Nations. But that accounted for only 0.59 per cent of
global foreign investment last year, much less than the 4.4 per cent share of
global gross domestic product (GDP) and the 6.5 per cent of world trade.
To mark the closing of the conference, today's People's Daily carries an editorial urging more balanced development of the economy.
It says the country has made remarkable achievements in the first year of the 11th five-year plan (2006-10), with the economy fulfilling all the targets set by the central government, and as a result, raising general living standards.
However, there are still problems that need to be tackled, most noticeably the relatively weak agricultural sector and the risk of financial fluctuations caused by excessive investment.
There should be a balance between investment and consumption, the domestic and overseas markets, and different segments of overall investment, it says, calling for efforts to expand domestic consumption while reducing trade surplus.
Rural areas, especially the less-developed regions in central and western China, should continue to receive strong support, the newspaper says.
The economic conference embodies a change of emphasis from speed of economic growth to quality, says a news analysis filed by the Xinhua News Agency and posted on the People's Daily website.
It is an implicit signal of moving away from the mode of development that put a lopsided emphasis on speed of growth, the analysis quoted Professor Zhong Wei of Beijing Normal University as saying.
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