Xi: China to tailor policies for stable growth

Newly appointed Communist Party chief Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China will fine tune its economic policies next year to maintain stable growth, Reuters reported, citing state television. China will stabilize exports and increase its efforts to expand domestic demand, Xi said during a meeting of the Politburo, the party’s 25-member executive committee. The government also plans to control inflation, maintain property controls, open the prices of resource products to market forces and reform state firms and value-added tax laws. The economy has revived in the last two months in part due to a slew of easing policies implemented earlier this year, but it faces external challenges in 2013 from the US “fiscal cliff” and the eurozone’s continuing debt crisis. China’s central bank reduced interest rates twice in June and July and cut banks’ capital requirements three times since the end of 2011 in a bid to stimulate growth.