The Chinese government is capable of reining in rising fixed assets investment to maintain healthy economic development, said Li Xiaochao, spokesman with the National Bureau of Statistics, on Thursday.

The first half has seen a 25.9-percent growth in fixed assets investment to 5.4168 trillion yuan, despite a slowdown in the growth rate from 29.8 percent in the same period last year.

Li contributed the investment hike to excessive liquidity and surging investment in newly started projects. Official figures show the January-June investment in new projects grew 6.4 percent, compared with 6.1 percent in the first five months of this year.

Low investment cost and low prices of resources products also spurred enterprises to accelerate investment in some sectors, said Li.

The real estate sector saw investment soar 28.5 percent, 4.3 percentage points higher than the same period in 2006 and 1.6 percentage points higher than the first quarter, to 988.7 billion yuan in the first half.

Investors were also lured to invest in sectors with large profit margins such as the iron and steel sector which has seen a price gap of 1,000 yuan between the domestic and global markets.

Investment in urban areas reached 4.6078 trillion yuan, up 26.7 percent, while investment in rural areas came to 809 billion yuan, up 21.5 percent. Investment in central and western areas maintained rapid growth.

The People's Bank of China has raised the benchmark interest rates twice and the reserve ratios five times in the first half. Export tax rebates have been scrapped or reduced while natural resources were taxed more to discourage enterprises that consume high energy and resources.

Zuo Xiaolei, an analyst with Galaxy Securities, said these measures had compelled some enterprises to reduce their investment scale.

Zhang Hanya, Director of the Research Institute of Investment with the National Development and Reform Commission said the country's economy was running well in general and that the government was not under much pressure to take tougher moves to rein in investment.

Rebuffing concerns that China's economy was becoming overheated, Li Xiaochao said contemporary China had changed totally. "After nearly 30 years of economic reforms and opening up, China can use both domestic and overseas markets to absorb its production capacity to boost its economic growth."