Thread: China's general economy info

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4052084.htm

Guizhou is the poorest province in China due to its geographical settings. Most of its land are montainous. So the transportation system is very important for improving its economy.

The could be one of the efforts for the Chinese gov to promote the western area.

President Hu used to be the govenor in the province.

GUIYANG, Jan. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Southwest China's Guizhou Province is expected to invest 152.3 billion yuan (about 19 billion U.S. dollars) in the coming 15 years to build a highway framework with its capital of Guiyang as the core, according to sources with the provincial government.

Statistics show Guizhou built 3,258 km high-grade highways, 576km of which are expressways, in 2005.

According to the plan, Guizhou will build three south-north main highways, three east-west main highways and eight branch highways, totaling 7,400 km.

By the year 2020, the completed highway framework will link all counties and cities and any two within four hours distance. Enditem

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...lines-business

From Associated Press


BEIJING — China's foreign currency reserves have risen to $818.9 billion, up 34% from a year earlier, state media reported today. At this growth rate, its reserves could reach $1 trillion this year, surpassing Japan's as the world's biggest.

The nation's central bank said reserves rose by $208.9 billion from 2004. Analysts estimate that three-fourths of China's reserves are held in U.S. Treasury bonds.

The government's foreign currency regulator said this month that its plans for 2006 include "actively exploring more efficient use of our [foreign-exchange] reserve assets

."

http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800403862_499486__no.HTM

Posted : 16 Jan 2006

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The chip industry may be hard-pressed to maintain a veneer of composure this year as it struggles to meet expectations for progress on Moore's Law in changing and often cynical times. But amid the pitfalls, savvy industry investors will also spy pockets of opportunitymany of them overseas.

That was the word out of the Needham Growth Conference last week as some 400 executives from the electronics, IT and biomedical sectors sought to cast their companies' positions in the best possible light before an audience of 3,000.

Needham Group analysts see the focus of system and semiconductor design activity shifting from the United States, Japan and Europe to China and the rest of Asia (ROA) over the next decade. That should focus investors' attention on the many Chinese and other Asian fabless IC companies that are listed on the Nasdaq. Investors should also be looking at companies pursuing advanced power-management solutions based on proprietary process technology, Needham analysts said.

"We believe power-management semiconductors will remain one of the fastest-growing industry segments through 2008," analyst N. Quinn Bolton stated in his January portfolio report. He predicts the segment will advance at an 11.2 percent compound annual growth rate between 2004 and 2008, from $5.5 billion to $8.4 billion.

The semiconductor industry's transition from vertical to horizontal integrationin which participants outsource manufacturing and, increasingly, design activities to focus on their core competenciesis ushering in what Needham believes will be a five- to 10-year migration of system and semiconductor design overseas.

"In the future," Bolton said, "we believe many Asian/Chinese fabless IC houses will comfortably attain gross margins of 40 percent and net margins of 20 percentmargins few U.S. companies will be able to match, given their higher labor, accounting and legal costs."

Needham predicts chip industry growth of 8 to 9 percent this year but warns that 2006 will be a critical year for the U.S. chip industry if it is to maintain its competitive edge. Some observers said the U.S. government needs to step in with initiatives for reshaping the competitive landscape. Those moves might include incentives for companies that reinvest at home instead of abroad; beefed-up broadband legislation to bolster the U.S. effort and narrow the gap with Asia and Europe, which are ahead in deployment; and changes in immigration laws, notably the H-1B visa program, to stem the "brain drain" of foreign-born but U.S.-trained scientists and innovators back to their countries of origin.

One vocal advocate at the conference for governmental leadership in safeguarding U.S. competitiveness was small-government champion Newt Gingrich. The competitive threats posed by China are "real," the former Speaker of the House said, "and we need to thoroughly overhaul our approach to math and science education as well as transform our legal and federal institutions in order to leave a better future for our grandchildren." In a keynote address, Gingrich proposed a blueprint for realizing "a vision of the desired future."

Global transformation
The work ethic and outside-the-box thinking needed to succeed in today's borderless industry are being applied by many of the companies that presented at the conference. Needham Group Inc. primarily serves high-tech companies that fly under the radar of the large investment-banking firms, and for the third year in a row it has "managed more public-equity offerings under $200 million for tech companies than any other Wall Street firm," said chairman and CEO George Needham.

Greg Hildebrand, chief financial officer of Volterra Semiconductor Corp., told the conference that his company has taken the high road in tackling the high-performance power-management segment. "Others have solutions that are 80 percent discrete components and 20 percent integrated, while our offerings are 80 percent integrated with 20 percent discrete components. That makes them very scalable," he said.

Volterra's offerings have been designed into systems from ATI, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Juniper, NEC and Nvidia. The company also has "the sole reference design for IBM's Cell processor design-ins," said Hildebrand.

While Volterra has found a way to integrate more functions onto its mixed-signal chips, Catalyst Semiconductor Inc. is "taking apart" integrated E2PROMs, its main product line, and providing the on-board mixed-signal building blocks as self-contained products.

"We are in our first phase of bringing out general-purpose analog and mixed-signal products based on elements [that are] part of our E2PROMs," Catalyst president and CEO Gelu Voicu told the conference. "The next phase is to come up with high-performance analog and application-specific standard products."

The company has operations in Thailand, employs 160 globally, has been profitable for seven years and claims 4,000 customers, only one of which accounts for more than 10 percent of its revenue. "E2PROMs are used everywhere and are the cash generator for our company," said Voicu. "Applications include LCD displays, digital cameras, cell phones, automotive instrumentation, modems, wireless LANs, network cards, DIMM modules, digital satellite box receivers, set-tops and Internet routers."

Innovator e-Silicon Corp. touted its success as a "general contractor" to the semiconductor industry. The company addresses what chairman, president and CEO Jack Harding called the "last unaddressed portion of the design-to-manufacturing cycle: the operations. We make money by shipping chips with our customers' name on them, by engaging in all the needed processes of chip design and fabbing the chip into production for the customer. We have 40-plus customers and are shipping 12 to 15 new products every year, and I think we have the right model for a changing custom-chip market."

Harding, a veteran who in his long career has worked at companies focused on assembly, EDA, wafer fab and design, told EE Times last winter, "I'm not a technologist. I've been fortunate to surround myself with very technically competent people. Early on, I worked in a Manhattan investment bank. Perhaps that has led me to think about the business of designing chips at a more abstract level than if I had focused just on the technology."

A focus on business will need to come more naturally to many in the global market, especially as China emerges in 2006-2007 as a competitive force in semiconductors, according to Needham. The investment firm believes that with the Olympics set for Beijing in 2008, the need to finish infrastructure for the event will drive electronics food chain spending in the 18 months leading up to the games, similar to the technology boost seen in the years preceding the Seoul, South Korea, games in 1992.

Chinese companies have the obvious advantage of proximity to many of their end markets.

Needham's "Outlook 2006" report quotes a statistic from EE Times-Asia that China locally had approximately 16,500 electronics manufacturers by the end of 2004. Many of those companies elect to use locally-designed and produced chips because of lower cost, quicker turnaround and the ability to customize design, the study found.

- Nicolas Mokhoff
EE Times

http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/...fx2456653.html
01.17.2006, 09:06 PM

BEIJING (AFX) - China's productivity growth has averaged 8.7 pct since 2000, the highest levels in Asia, business research organization The Conference Board said.

In 2004, China's productivity growth was 8.4 pct, it said. No figure for 2005 was provided.

The Conference Board said growth since 2000 outstrips the 1995-2000 level, when China averaged 3.1 pct.

'This suggests that dramatic changes in reform policies and the increase in openness prior to China's ascension to the World Trade Organization showed their major impact during the most recent years,' said Bart van Ark, director of The Conference Board's international economic research program.

Most developed nations experienced slowing productivity in 2005, with growth rates between 1.5 to two pct, according to the statement.

The US saw its productivity drop to 1.8 pct in 2005 from three pct in 2004.

The average productivity rate for the European Union in 2005 stood at 0.5 pct, down from 1.4 pct the previous year.

India saw its productivity grow by 4.4 pct in 2004, and experienced average growth of 4.1 pct in the 2000-2004 period. No 2005 figure was provided.

India's slow growth compared to China is related to employment growth of around two pct 'during recent years'. This is double the growth of labor input in China, The Conference Board said, adding that China experienced similar moderate gains in productivity during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4069843.htm

www.chinaview.cn 2006-01-19 02:53:44

BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The number of foreign students studying in China has risen more than 20 percent annually over the past five years, a Chinese educational official said here Wednesday.

"The Chinese government values educational cooperation with foreign countries and welcomes more foreign students to come to China," said Liu Baoli, vice director of the international cooperation department of the Ministry of Education (MOE).

Addressing a Spring Festival reception held for foreign graduates, he said there were 110,000 foreign students studying in China in 2004. The number in 2005, which has not come out yet, should be much higher.

"China wishes to know more about the world and let the world know more about China," said Liu.

He said the rapid development of China's higher education and high-quality universities is attracting more and more foreign students. China has become a popular destination for foreign students.

More than 500 Chinese universities have met conditions of admitting foreign students, he said.

Foreign graduates, Liu said, have contributed positively to friendly exchanges between China and other countries in the world in diplomatic, economic and cultural fields.

He said the ministry will adopt new measures to expand enrollment of foreign students.

"In 2006, about 10,000 foreign students will come to study in China on scholarships provided by the Chinese government," said Liu. "The standard of scholarships will also be lifted."

Since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, it has received students from more than 170 countries. Enditem

http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch...9155722,00.htm


Published: Wednesday 18 January 2006

The number of web users in China, the world's second-largest internet market, grew by 18 per cent in 2005 to 111 million, the Economic Daily reported on Wednesday.

Some 8.5 per cent of the country's 1.3 billion people now have access to the net, the newspaper reported, citing a survey released by the China Internet Network Information Center.

State media previously predicted that 120 million Chinese people would be surfing the web by the end of 2005, as computers find their way into more homes and domestic telecommunications networks grow.

The 2005 gains were higher than those in 2004, when the number of internet users grew 16 per cent to 94 million.

More than half of China's web population - or about 64 million people - accessed the net via broadband connections, suggesting a 50 per cent increase from 2004, as China strongly promotes the development of its broadband networks.

The internet's explosive growth in China has come despite increased efforts by the government to control the medium, in which occasional pockets of free speech have appeared in chat sites and blogs.

China has the world's number two PC market, with nearly 16 million units shipped in 2004 and that number is expected to have grown another 13 per cent in 2005, according to data-tracking firm IDC.

PC makers such as industry leaders Lenovo Group and Dell shipped 5.2 million units in the third quarter of 2005, according to IDC.

The growth of the internet has also spawned a growing number of local online players, including Yahoo!-invested ecommerce firm Alibaba.com, web portal Sina, online game firm Shanda Interactive Entertainment and online search firm Baidu.com.

Major new-media multinationals attracted by the market's big growth potential have also set up shop in China, including Amazon, eBay and Google.

http://english.eastday.com/eastday/e...ai1803499.html

19/1/2006 17:12


China provided jobs for 9.7 million urban residents in 2005, compared with 9.8 million in 2004, and helped 5.1 million laid-offs, among which 1.3 million aged 40 to 50, get re-employed, a spokesman with the Ministry of Labor and Social Security said in Beijing today.
During the 2001-2005 period, more than 180 million workers laid off from state-owned enterprises found new jobs, said spokesman Hu Xiaoyi at a press conference.
In 2005, he said, the number of unemployed people stood at 8.39 million, with a registered unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, the same with the previous year.
"This is the third consecutive year China has fully accomplished its goal for employment and re-employment," said Hu, adding that at the end of 2005, China's employed population reached 760 million, 40 million more than at the end of 2000.
In 2005, nearly 700 billion yuan (US$87.5 billion) was pooled as funds for pension, unemployment, medical treatment, work injury and maternity insurance, with 540 billion yuan paid to beneficiaries, the spokesman said.
As for the goal for 2006, he said, China will work to find new jobs for 9 million urban residents and help 5 million of workers laid off from state-owned enterprises get re-employed.
"The registered unemployment rate for urban residents will be controlled below 4.6 percent in 2006," he said.
From 2001 to 2005, enterprise retirees received 1.5876 trillion yuan (US$198.45 billion) in basic pension, a rise of 803.2 billion yuan (US$100.4 billion), or 103 percent, from the previous five years.
At the end of 2005, China's endowment insurance service covered 174.44 million, up 38.26 million, or 28 percent, from at the end of 2000.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4080126.htm

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- A 4,200-kilometer-long extra high-tension power grid above 750-kilovolt will be established in China by 2010, said the State Power Grid Development Company here Friday.

Liu Zhenya, general manager of the State Power Grid Development Company, said at the company's first staff conference that more extra high-tension power grids will be built in the coming years, so as to ease bottleneck on power supply in China.

Liu said by 2010, China's trans-province long-distance electricity transmission capacity will reach 70 million kilowatt, with its annual electricity sales exceeding 2.2 trillion kilowatt-hours.

In 2005, the company generated 1.46 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, a rise of 13.6 percent, with 77.4 billion kilowatt-hours for trans-province users.

Liu said the company profits 14.4 billion yuan (1.79 billion U.S. dollars) in 2005, 44.9 percent more than that in 2004.

According to Liu, China's first demonstration projects for 750-kilovolt transmission line started operation at the end of 2005, a remarkable sign for the company to accelerate extra high-tension power grids construction in 2006.

The company plans to input 160 billion yuan (19.85 billion U.S. dollars) on power grid construction and renovation in 2006, and put an additional 20,000 kilometers electricity transmission line above 220-kilovolt, said Liu. Enditem

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2006/01/21/bus/ad.spending.rises.in.asia.hits.$66b..html

SINGAPORE - Chinese consumers buying more lifestyle products drove advertisement spending in key Asia-Pacific media markets up 14 percent to a record $66.6 billion dollars in the year to September 2005, an industry report said yesterday.

The figures, for regional markets excluding Japan, showed corporate spending on television, newspaper and magazine advertisements in China totalled nearly $37 billion, up 21 percent and accounting for 56 percent of the regional market, Nielsen Media Research said.

Ad economy

“China now sits just behind Japan as the third advertising economy globally,” it said in a statement. As a television advertising market only, China is ranked second globally, it added.

Professional services, tonics and vitamins, and shampoo and hair care products were the most advertised in China, with oral care items posting an 80 percent rise in ad spending.

Nielsen Media Research also identified a rising trend of credit card, whisky and luggage advertising campaigns in China last year.

It attributed this trend to “the changing lifestyle of Chinese consumers who have more disposable income than ever before (and) are more willing to spend.”

Gayle Cunningham, executive director for Nielsen Media in China and Hong Kong, said advertising spending in Australia, the Philippines and India also posted strong growth while South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore saw “modest declines.”

Television was the main vehicle, accounting for 66 percent of spending, followed by newspapers and magazines.

For Hong Kong, the advertising market rose 11 percent as more companies advertised skin care as well as health and fitness products.

“In view of the uncertainty about avian flu and SARS, people in Hong Kong have become more health conscious,” the research said. (AFP)

http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/n...ces_for_Google

M$ only has the reasearch labs in CHina so far. When Google decided to set up its lab in CHina. Both enter the competetion for the brian power.

BEIJING, China (UPI) -- Analysts see Microsoft`s announcement it was consolidating its Chinese R&D assets as a move preparing for increased competition from Google.

Zhang Yaqin, vice chairman of Microsoft China, said the company`s new Microsoft China Research and Development Group aims to nearly double in 2006 by recruiting 800 people, plus add up to 3,000 more personnel within the next three to five years.

Zhang, who was appointed to head the new group on Wednesday, was quoted in the Chinese media saying, 'Our goal is simple and clear: to allow this group to become a world-class technological and product R&D center.'

At present, the Redmond, Wash.-based company has more than 800 personnel doing R&D in five big groups and several regional teams. Zhang listed the main reasons Microsoft wanted to place all R&D units in one group was to increase coordination and communication for strategic development of local market opportunities.

The company is expected to boost investment in China R&D after consolidating all units under one umbrella organization. Zhang said Microsoft`s annual investment in R&D was about $100 million, a figure that will rise as more personnel are added.

Other objectives of the new group are to work more closely with indigenous firms and establish a department for strategic cooperation. Microsoft promises to outsource more work to local partners in a move to reduce costs and gain goodwill by helping Chinese companies grow.

Analysts say Microsoft is circling the wagons, opening the purse strings and increasing localization ahead of what portends to become one of the big tech battles of the year to watch in China: Microsoft and Google going head to head.

Google, a major threat to Microsoft, is also expected to launch an R&D center in China, headed by Dr. Kaifu Lee. Lee is a former Microsoft corporate vice president and the man who founded its R&D operations in China.

Lee`s defection to rival Google last year sparked a bitter legal battle and bad press for Microsoft in the China market. While it won an injunction to delay Lee joining Google, it was unable to stave off his move to the keenest enemy camp from ultimately happening.

The China Daily reported the Web search giant initially planned to recruit 50 people but has decided to expand more quickly. Most analysts expect this will be possible with Lee at the helm, given his good relations with Chinese officials and solid track record of innovative technology.

Many industry watchers see Microsoft being in the fight of its life. Earlier this week China announced it had 111 million Internet users, third-largest worldwide after the United States and Japan. The country also has more than 350 million mobile-phone subscribers, the biggest single market.

http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...&imageid=&cap=

By Jason Subler

BEIJING, Jan 24 (Reuters) - China's top national economic planner estimated that industrial output had grown 16.4 percent in 2005, backing economists' expectation that the country will announce strong and sustained economic growth on Wednesday.

The National Development and Reform Commission also said China's producer price index for 2005 had been up about 5 percent on 2004, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The forecasts followed statements by two officials earlier this month that China's economy had grown 9.8 percent in 2005.

Both estimates given by the planning agency were largely in line with those of economists polled by Reuters, who also estimate 2005 gross domestic product grew 9.8 percent, while the fourth quarter alone was up 9.7 percent on a year before.

Their median estimate of 2005 growth in industrial output was 16.3 percent, while that for PPI growth was 4.9 percent.

The commission's figures, if they turn out to match those to be issued by the National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, would continue a trend of annual growth in industrial production in excess of 16 percent that has been sustained since 2003.

They would also underline a recent trend of slowing annual increases in producer prices, which peaked at 6.1 percent in 2004 but have been steadily dropping since mid-2005.

Analysts expect that fourth-quarter and full-year data to be issued on Wednesday will show that fixed-asset investment -- in such things as bridges, factories and office buildings -- will have continued to grow at high levels through the end of 2005.

The economists polled by Reuters estimated annual growth in urban fixed-asset investment would hit 28 percent in December, and that overall fixed-asset investment would be 25 percent greater in 2005 than a year earlier.


PROMOTING CONSUMPTION

The customs administration said earlier this month that China's trade surplus in 2005 hit $102 billion, helped along by a surplus of $11 billion in December.

Analysts will also be looking to Wednesday's retail sales figures for signs of whether China's economy has begun to show any signs of relying more on consumption as a driver of growth.

China's policy makers have stressed that they hope to reduce the economy's reliance on investments and exports in favour of consumption, which is seen as a more reliable source of growth momentum.

The economic planning agency also said industrial profits in 2005 had been an estimated 20 percent higher than a year earlier, at 1.38 trillion yuan ($171 billion), Xinhua reported.

Separately, Li Rongrong, director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said the country's 169 centrally administered state-owned enterprises had made a combined profit of 628 billion yuan ($77.9 billion) in 2005, 27.9 percent more than in 2004.

The official China Daily cited Li as saying the enterprises' net assets amounted to 4.6 trillion yuan ($571 billion) in 2005, 18.1 percent greater than in 2004. Their total assets grew by 15 percent in 2005, the paper said, without citing a figure.

Li attributed the rising profits to improving governance in state firms, according to the report. He said his commission would speed up closures of poorly-performing state-owned firms in the coming year to make the state sector more competitive.

(Additional reporting by Eadie Chen)

($1=8.0620 yuan)

http://za.today.reuters.com/news/new...L-20060123.XML

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, the world's top steel maker, became a small net exporter in 2005 for the first time as mills produced a little more steel than the country could use, Customs data showed on Monday.

The data showed China exported 27.59 million tonnes of semi-finished steel and steel products last year, while imports reached 27.13 million tonnes, making China a net exporter with 460,000 tonnes.

Rapid expansion by Chinese steel mills and growing exports have threatened margins for global steel players, and helped push up the cost of raw materials, including iron ore.

China produced 371 million tonnes of steel products in 2005, up 24.1 percent on the year earlier. Crude steel output rose 24.5 percent to 349 million tonnes, said analyst Xu Aihua of state-backed metals consultancy Antaike Information Co., citing figures from the China Iron and Steel Association.

China's annual steel capacity reached 470 million tonnes by end-2005, compared with domestic demand estimated at about 350 million tonnes, state media said.

"The surplus is a major reason behind rising steel exports," Xu said.

China's net steel imports reached 12.87 million tonnes in 2004.

"The most important thing to look at is steel products. China is the world's largest importer of steel products, at over 5 million tonnes this year," said Li Xinchuang, vice president of the China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute and the architect of a policy that encourages consolidation in China's steel industry.

The official figures also showed Chinese 2005 coal imports had jumped 40.1 percent to 26.17 million tonnes, while exports fell 17.3 percent to 71.68 million tonnes. Exports of coke and semi-coke fell 15 percent to 12.76 million tonnes.

China also produced 25.4 percent more iron ore in 2005 at 421 million tonnes.

China's commerce ministry said last week that rising steel stocks and the introduction of new capacity would continue to depress domestic prices of steel products. Prices were already down more than 30 percent from the year earlier.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_4093809.htm

BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- China Huaneng Enterprise Group, the country's leading electricity producer, plans to be equipped with 80,000 megawatts of installed capacity by 2010, according to information provided by the Ministry of Commerce on its website.

During the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), the installed capacity and power output of Huaneng had been growing at an average annual rate of 6.9 percent and 14 percent.

The sales revenue of Huaneng reached 73 billion yuan (9.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2005, and is expected to exceed 140 billion yuan by 2010.

During the 10th Five-Year Plan period, Huaneng's annual growth of sales revenue averaged at 16.3 percent, and that of profit averaged at 12.3 percent.

By the end of 2005, the total asset of this state-owned enterprises reached 234.9 billion yuan, with installed capacity of43,214 megawatts. Enditem

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english...ent_515459.htm

China's economy expanded with full power in 2005, rising an eye-catching 9.9 per cent over 2004, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a publicly-announced statement in Beijing on Wednesday.

The economic volume, in GDP terms, has overtaken France's as the world's 5th largest, analysts and economists said.


A port in Nanjing is seen in this photo taken in January 11, 2006. [newsphoto]


They believed China's economy will continue to power ahead with full steam, led by a rising domestic demand, vigorous overseas consumption of Chinese goods and continuing big investments in infrastructure, urban and rural build-up, and technological innovation and renovation.

The statistical bureau commissioner Li Deshui said that China's gross domestic product rose to 18.2 trillion yuan (US$2.3 trillion) in 2005 after expanding 10.1 percent in 2004.

The economy grew 9.9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier after expanding a revised 9.8 percent in the previous three months, the bureau said.

France's 2004 output was worth $2.05 trillion and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has forecast 1.6 percent growth for the country in 2005, the Bloomberg News reported. China is set to overtake the U.K. this year as the 4th-largest economy in the world.


Li Deshui, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, speaks at a press conference on China's economic performance in Beijing on January 25, 2006. [Xinhua]
The U.S.'s $12 trillion economy stands at No. 1, and Japan's is the second-largest, at $4.7 trillion.

Exports and domestic consumption, coupled with booming fixed-asset investment, made China the world's fastest-growing major economy and an engine for worldwide expansion.

China was the second-biggest contributor to global growth in 2004, after the U.S., according to the International Monetary Fund, the Bloomberg reported.

Exports surged 28 percent to $762 billion last year, generating a record $102 billion trade surplus. Overseas sales amounted to almost 40 percent of GDP, compared with about 25 percent in France, according to the World Bank. Investment makes up about 45 percent of China's output.

A nationwide economic census completed last year that revealed millions of previously unaccounted-for services companies helped ease concerns about China's ability to sustain growth. The census, published last month, added $284 billion -- equivalent to the output of Austria -- to China's 2004 GDP and suggested services are more important to the economy than previously thought.

In announcing their blueprint for economic development for the coming five years in October, China's leaders said they will step up efforts to stimulate consumer spending in an economy where per capita incomes are still a 16th of France's.