BLBG: China's Economy Expanded at About 10% Pace in 2010, Vice Premier Li Says
China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang estimated the country’s economy grew about 10 percent last year, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing a transcript of comments he made to business executives during a visit to Madrid on Jan. 5.
Li, who is on nine-day tour of Spain, Germany and the UK, also forecast retail sales in the world’s most populous nation climbed 18.5 percent last year from a year earlier, Xinhua said. The vice premier gave the same forecasts to business people in Berlin yesterday, according to a separate report on the website of the China Daily newspaper today.
China may have overtaken Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy in 2010 after its gross domestic product exceeded its Asian neighbor’s in the second and third quarters. The country has grown at an average 11.4 percent pace over the past five years and the nation’s top economic planning agency last month pledged to ensure “stable and relatively rapid” development in 2011.
“China still faces arduous tasks in its development and must continue to expand trade and investment with other countries to ensure further growth,” Li told business people in Spain, according to Xinhua.
The vice premier’s estimate for China’s expansion last year is the same as that given by central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan on Dec. 15 in a speech at Peking University, according to a transcript posted on the bank’s website on Jan. 5.
Record Sales
Some 90 percent of China’s economic growth was driven by domestic demand last year, Li told executives in Berlin, the China Daily reported. Ford Motor Co. said today its vehicle sales in China, the world’s largest auto market, jumped 40 percent to a record 582,467 last year.
The median estimate of 18 economists in a Bloomberg survey is for growth of 10.1 percent in 2010. Expansion will slow to 9 percent this year, still three times the rate of the U.S. and six times the speed of the euro zone, Bloomberg surveys show. The International Monetary Fund estimated in October that China’s economy would grow by 9.6 percent in 2011.
Li is thought to be the front-runner to succeed Premier Wen Jiabao in 2012, according to Li Cheng, director of research at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center in Washington.
