China to pursue reforms while steadying growth

TARGETS FOR 2014

The economic work conference pledged to implement financial, taxation and other reforms while maintaining the positive trend of growth in 2014, noted Qu Hongbin.

"We expect Beijing to maintain the current policy stance to keep growth within its comfort zone," he said.

The GDP growth rate and CPI targets for 2014 are likely to remain unchanged from last year -- 7.5 percent for the former and 3.5 percent for the latter, according to Qu.

Peng agreed.

China will probably target growth at around 7.5 percent next year to boost confidence among the public and enterprises, inspire growth momentum and ensure stable employment, he said.

The economist also maintained that next year's growth target could be more flexible as China is ready to embrace a slight slowdown for the sake of economic restructuring, from being investment-led to becoming more consumption-driven.

Peng predicted a macro policy marginally slanted towards tightness, given the possible expansion of shadow banking and local governments' debt problems.

Qu predicted that the status quo of China's monetary policy would be maintained, with neither immediate tightening nor immediate easing in sight, since overall inflation pressures remain modest.

On the fiscal front, a proactive fiscal policy implies that budgeted fiscal deficits will remain at 2 to 2.1 percent of GDP in 2014, the same as this year, he added.

Fiscal spending related to social security, public housing, education and healthcare should increase, while government administrative spending is expected to be cut further, according to Qu.

There will be no change in overall policy stance in 2014, said Zhang Zhiwei, chief China economist with Japan's Nomura Securities, in a research note.

The economic meeting's statement said that China will maintain a "proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy," which -- Zhang noted -- is the same phrase the government used for its policy stance in 2013.

This suggests the targets for broad money supply (M2) growth and the fiscal deficit may remain largely unchanged from 2013 levels.

The statement said the Chinese economy "faces downside risks" and the government will "maintain reasonable growth of money, credit, and total social financing," which implies monetary policy may not tighten significantly in 2014, Zhang added.