China 'is no Middle-east' !

'No way' of North Africans and Arabs unrest here: Wen
By Marianne Barriaux (AFP) 

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BEIJING — China's Premier Wen Jiabao rejected any comparison Monday between his country and the unrest-hit Middle East, but said Beijing faced a tough test dealing with inflation and other hot-button issues.

"We face extremely daunting tasks and complex domestic and international situations," Wen told reporters in an annual press briefing after the close of the nation's parliament session.

China's ruling Communist Party is grappling with a range of problems such as inflation, official corruption, huge environmental degradation, and land grabs by property developers who kick off existing residents.

The leadership has thus watched with concern the unrest that has hit several nations in the Middle East and North Africa, but Wen rejected any comparison between China and those countries.

"We have followed closely the turbulence in some North African and Middle Eastern countries. We believe it is not right to draw an analogy between China and those countries," Wen told reporters.

Beijing has targeted more balanced and sustainable development and fairer distribution of wealth under a new growth plan for the next five years that calls for a more moderate seven percent annual economic expansion.

The plan was approved by the congress on Monday.Wen said balanced development will remain the government's priority but admitted it will be a challenge keeping growth in the world's second-largest economy fast enough to create jobs, but moderate enough to prevent inflation worsening.

"It will not be easy to achieve the seven percent target while also ensuring a good quality of economic development," he said.

Decades of blistering export-dependent growth have made China's economy a force in the world, but Beijing has struggled to spread the wealth evenly among its 1.3 billion population.

"Over the next five years and for a long period of time to come in the course of China's development, we will make the transformation of China's economic development pattern our priority."

Inflation tops the government's agenda and while pledging further efforts to contain rising prices of food, housing and other essentials, Wen likened that battle to the challenge of corralling a tiger.

"Inflation is having a big impact on China, this is a factor that is not easy to control," he said.

"Inflation is like a tiger; once it gets free, it is difficult to put back in the cage."

Inflation has remained stubbornly high -- 4.9 percent in both January and February -- despite a series of policy steps including three recent interest rate hikes.

The consumer price index rose by a more than two-year high of 5.1 percent in November. Inflation has a history of sparking unrest in China, with its hundreds of millions of poor farmers and low-paid workers scraping to get by.

Wen took a swipe at monetary steps taken by the United States, which in November undertook massive stimulus spending known as "quantitative easing" in a bid to jump-start the weak American economy.

"Some countries have pursued a quantitative easing that has caused fluctuations in exchange rates of some currencies and affected global commodity prices," he said.

China has annually set an eight percent economic growth target -- considered the minimum required to keep the economy growing fast enough to stave off social unrest.

That goal is routinely surpassed each year. In 2010, the economy grew 10.3 percent.

Wen called corruption - another key factor inn the Middle East unrest - the "bigger danger" faced by China and said political reform was necessary to help  combat it.

"Without political reform, economic reform cannot succeed and the achievements we have made may be lost" Wen said.

Copyright © 2011 AFP