Confidence in growth

Fresh evidence of a broader rebound for the Chinese economy definitely adds to the credibility of the country's ambition to double its 2010 gross domestic product and per capita income by 2020. Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, announced the goal at the start of the 18th National Party Congress on Thursday.

China's economic slowdown during most of this year had raised concerns about the health of the world's second largest economy. The country's GDP growth slowed to 7.4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter, marking a downturn for seven straight quarters and the slowest quarterly expansion in 14 quarters.

However, the latest economic figures show that, without sacrificing the government's macroeconomic efforts to restructure the economy and transform the growth mode, the economy is gaining new momentum.

China's trade surplus soared to $32 billion in October, the biggest in 45 months, as exports rose to a five-month high of more than 11 percent. While the country's industrial production for October grew 9.6 percent and retail sales increased 14.5 percent year-on-year.

Even rosier is the growth picture that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has drawn for China. Its latest outlook report predicts that China's share of the global GDP will grow from today's 17 percent to 28 percent in 2030, and China will overtake the United States to become the largest world economy in just a few years.

Such confidence in China's growth potential is impressive and is badly needed when the global economy is deeply troubled by the lack of any meaningful growth in debt-laden developed countries.

As the world's most populous country and the largest developing economy, China's emergence as the strongest economic power will considerably speed up the global recovery.

Yet, the country's continued growth is not set in stone given all the challenges it faces. China needs to deal with a rapidly aging population and growing environmental problems through aggressive transformation of its growth model.

However, after three decades of double-digit growth, particularly during the past decade when the Chinese economy grew from being the world's sixth largest to the second largest, we have ample reasons to pin high hopes on the new roadmap for growth.

The reform tasks will be arduous, but attaining the country's goal of achieving a well-off society in an all-around way should bolster our resolution to overcome all the difficulties that lie ahead.