Paulson praises China's property Taming efforts - Wall Street Journal

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China's economy grows more than the forecast 9.7% as prices Jump

4: 26 Pm EDT by Bloomberg News, April 15, 2011

April 15 (Bloomberg)--the Chinese economy grew more - that - estimated 9.7% in the first quarter and the inflation in March has accelerated the fastest rate since 2008, adding to pressure for further monetary tightening.

Consumer prices increased by 5.4% a year earlier, the Statistics Office, said at a Conference in Beijing today. The median forecast in surveys of Bloomberg News, economists have been for the growth of 9.4% and the inflation of 5.2%.The Central Bank can stimulate reserve requirements for lenders, as early as this evening to drain liquidity in important economy the fastest-growing, Credit Agricole CIB and & Australia New Zealand Banking Group, said. Data of today can also add pressure increase of interest rates and more rapid appreciation in the yuan after foods and fresh products drove inflation higher than the target of the Government for a third month 2011. "" There is little economic moderation despite monetary tightening is aggressive, ", said Li-Gang Liu, Economist ANZ in Hong Kong, who previously worked for the World Bank. "Inflation remains a high risk."The report of the reserve is 20% for the largest banks and the reference of one year for borrowing costs is 6.31 percent after four rate increases since mid-October. The growth was 9.8% in the fourth quarter of last year.Index of Composite closed Shanghai 0.3 per cent higher. The yuan has varied little at 6.5295 per dollar as of 3: 27 pm, local time.Pressures Asian InflationInflation across Asia have been highlighted by India reports today a jump from 8.98% greater than the forecast of the index of the prices of wholesale in March of the previous year.Data release today in China confirmed numbers circulating yesterday, including a report of Phoenix television. The statistics bureau condemned any leaks and said offenders will be punished.Investment in assets other than rural households has increased by 25% in the first quarter a year earlier and industrial production soared 15 percent in March, the statistics bureau, said. Retail sales grew an annual 17 percent in March and production price has jumped to 7.3%, showed the report today.Officials must evaluate the "lagging effects" of monetary policy to avoid future injury of the economy, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said this week. China International Capital Corp., most large investment bank of China, warned that the growth of corporate earnings may slow as the economy cools in the coming months. "Inflationary pressures" may influence consumption in China, Pierre Bouchut, financial agent for Carrefour SA, second retailer in the world, said analysts yesterday. "CostsInflation of commodities was mainly due to costs of food, which increased by 12% in March from the previous year. The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa said at a meeting in Sanya, China, yesterday that the volatile commodity prices pose a threat to the global economy, asking more than regulation.Non-food inflation accelerated to 2.7 per cent, while reserves a jump in Exchange China at a world record $ 3 trillion, reported yesterday, said the additional risk that capital inflows could fuel inflation.Taming the price is the top Government and "urgent" priority, China's cabinet, said after the meeting in Beijing this week to examine the performance of the world's second economy. Officials aim to contain inflation to 4% for the entire year. The tightening measures and comparisons with the year more high-bases earlier can slow down the earnings of prices in the second half of the year, according to the HSBC Holdings Plc.The economy increased by 2.1% over the previous quarter, seasonally adjusted, bureau of statisticssaid today, releasing this number for the first time. Comparing with a 2.4 percentage gain in the fourth quarter. Consumer prices have slipped 0.2% in March, February.Wen on YuanThe Central Bank may increase the flexibility of the yuan to "eliminate the monetary conditions that fuel inflation," Wen said this week. The Chinese currency is described by the United States as undervalued and a factor of global economic imbalances. "" It would be very advantageous to allow the currency to appreciate as a means of controlling inflation, "billionaire investor George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, said at a Conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, April 10. He described inflation as "a little out of control."Investors have reported the confidence that the fastest growing major economy will achieve a landing soft called, with controlled inflation and expansion continued. Stock market index of the reference of Shanghai Advanced 8% in the three months through today, compared to a 2% decrease in the cabinet of the MSCI Asia Pacific Index.China this week, said this property rising prices in many cities and of rising inflation expectations are the key concerns as the nation wrestling to the following a record 17.5 billion yuan ($2.7 billion) of loans plus 2009 and 2010.Rating CutFitch ratings cut the Outlook for the rating of sovereign debt of the local currency of China to "negative" from "stable" this weekciting a likely deterioration of quality of the assets of the Bank. Moody's Investors Service lowered its Outlook for the property sector to "negative" from "stable" on the residential concern sales could reduce by 30% if local governments apply borders of housing.In contrast, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., lending more of the world by the value of market, said its bad-loan ratio decreased and excluded a deterioration in the quality of property assets and the local Government of loan. "If economic growth, the financial sector is required to do well,"President Jiang Jianqing told in an interview with Bloomberg Television to Sanya in southern China's Hainan province yesterday." "The challenges that we face in areas such as real estate and local government funding vehicles will all solved." Chinese banks asset quality deteriorates. "China should protect against the risk of overheating, International Monetary Fund said in its semi-annual Economic Outlook published on 11 April. "Credit growth remains high compared to dazzling previous crises and credit booms and concern mounting on the potential for steep corrections in the price of real estate and their implications, the Fund has.

-Victoria Ruan, Zheng Lifei, Zhang Dingmin. With the help of Jay Wang at Singapore. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Sunil Jagtiani.

To communicate with the staff of Bloomberg News on this story: Victoria Ruan vruan1@bloomberg.net Beijing; Zheng Lifei in Beijing at lzheng32@bloomberg.net

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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst in the ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net

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Culture and control: China's new Museum, history toes party line

But if their interests on the cultural revolution, which tore the country apart from 1966 to 1976 and resulted in millions of deaths do, need to search a rear corner of the two million square foot museum, the opening is completed this month for a single photograph and three lines of text, which are the only reference to this era.

No less grand - serves China more than a decade and nearly $ 400 million, which remake, a monument to his rising National Museum in a leading showcase of the history and culture, are the world's largest museum under one roof - and sustainable as the Olympic Games in 2008.

But a tradition was set in place: China will confront not his own history. The Museum is less the product of extensive research, discovery, or creativity as the most famous symbol of the Communist Party of China's efforts to control of the narrative of the history and suppress alternative points of view, even those that are present in the ruling elite. It is also an example for such as China, it is difficult to create cultural institutions which prove equal to its economic achievements.

With participants tortured reconstruction describe one interviews, longer than planned, constantly revised in the year with plans to political twists and turns, accommodate pulled decided many personally by top party leaders.

Proposals for a permanent historical exhibition discussed the disasters of the early Communist rule have killed would rejected - in particular the great leap forward, a political campaign and resulting famine, the more than 20 million officials. Some organizers wanted an honest assessment of the cultural revolution, a decade-long attack on the traditional culture and learning, but this effort was squashed.

Instead, the authorities decided that the exhibition should concentrate contemporary China, such as the Museum before its extensive makeover, on the party triumphs.

Another permanent exhibition, presented at China's ancient history, an idealized version of the past. It tells the uplifting story of the Chinese ethnic groups together to draw create "brilliant services."

"The party will determine historical truth," said Yang Jisheng, a historian whose book front famine in China was banned on the big jump to. "It is ensure that if competing versions are allowed, then their legitimacy in question will be put."

Many countries are not their history as to independent historians consider fully credible. American museums were under pressure to allow more fully for slavery. American Indians won a long battle to open her own Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.c.; other museums celebrate the westward expansion of the United States but give short verstell-and killing the Indians.

Nevertheless, only a few countries with China can compete to suppress to shades of gray about her past. One result is that the Chinese public rare access to the Internet to versions of history, that differ from party propaganda and public support for some nationalist causes sometimes even stronger than his own party is attitudes. Many Chinese are confused, such as claims that some Tibetans and Uighurs are dissatisfied with Chinese rule or Japanese and Taiwanese may have different perceptions of China in their territory.

This means that the National Museum, China's long history has granted unlimited access to the treasures and relics, have not succeeded, the political constraints to escape, which for centuries hobbled the study of Chinese history. Then, as today ruler uses history to present, to make a theme that has marked almost every era.

"A public museum in China rarely about the past," said Hung Chang-Tai, Professor at the Hong Kong University of science and technology, who has written about the Museum. "It is about the current image of the party and as the party itself seen to be."

The red line

The National Museum has its roots in the Communist Party of China's wish for a legacy. In his memoirs Wang Yeqiu remembers, the Director of the Museum accession was, entered Beijing in 1949 Communist forces as they and make just used for a prison to a scaffold in 1927, one of the founding members of the party are to secure. The framework was the first element in the collection of the Museum. But its opening in 1959 was marred by a problem that would keep track of it to the present - politics. Prime Minister Zhou Enlai visited which proposed exhibition and it does not emphasize the "red line", said: the line of thought of Mao, the country's top leader.

In the next few decades, the Museum closed spent more time than open. It officially opened 1961, then closed at the beginning of the cultural revolution in 1966, reopening in 1979 and was then through a series of closings and openings as a leader for an interpretation of the past, that they could accept. The exhibition of contemporary history, closed for the good began in 2001 as civil servants, to see the Museum as an anachronism, to promote that no modern image to outside. In the same year Beijing won its bid for the Olympic Games 2008 and officials were concerned that the capital would not be a worthy host. A year earlier, a British Research Institute in Beijing a city rated third level on a par with Warsaw and Bangkok. The report was widely discussed with officials that Beijing had no notable museums or galleries in China.

Zhang Jing contributed research.

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