Chinese officials are “favorable” to the notion of Christine Lagarde succeeding Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bloomberg reported. The statement was given by French government spokesman Francois Baroin in a radio interview. China has yet to give a public statement on Lagarde’s candidacy. Lagarde, currently acting as France’s finance minister, is tipped as the front-runner in the race to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned from the IMF after his arrest on charges of sexual assault in the US. Zhou Xiaochuan, head of China’s central bank, seemed to indicate last week that China would prefer a candidate from the developing world to better reflect shifting economic realities. European governments have been vociferously pushing for a European candidate, in order to more effectively manage the politics of bailing out peripheral EU nations.