chinadaily
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TUESDAY JULY 29, 2008
PAGECHINA DAILY
Stable economic growth to get priority
slowdown over in ation control
By Xin Zhiming
Protection zone
to be set up for Qiang culture
>QIANG, From Page 1
It is this miraculous feature that could fetch the structures international recognition be-cause the central government has been trying to get them a UNESCO world cultural herit-age site status.
Zhang Bai, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said yester-day: “Their unique structure and outstanding quake-resist-ant feature make them a very eligible candidate.”
During a group interview, organized by the 2008 Beijing International Media Center, Zhang said Taoping’s application would be submitted in the next few years along with those of the Songshan Mountain, the Wutai Mountain and the Silk Road.Though Taoping did not suf-fer much damage, some other places where the Qiang people live, such as Beichuan county, were devastated by the quake.“We’re going to set up a cul-tural protection zone for Qiang culture in Sichuan (this year) because it needs urgent protec-tion,” said Zhang Xu, director of the intangible cultural heritage department of the Ministry of Culture.
The Qiang cultural protec-tion zone covers Beichuan, Wenchuan, Lixian and Maox-ian counties.
Some anthropologists say the Qiang minority group de-scended from a legendary 21st-century BC Chinese emperor. Others say it is a lost Israelite tribe. Still others have traced its origin to other sources.
The Qiangs numbered only about 300,000, and as their mis-fortune would have it, almost all of them lived within 100 km of the epicenter, and lost about 10 percent of its population to the quake.
The quake damaged or destroyed 23 national-level intangible cultural heritage relics.
Zhang Xu said the central and local governments will share the cost of setting up the zone and will try to rebuild Qiang villages, preserve the relics, give “Qiang cultural masters” more opportu-nities to practice their traditions and resume their festivals, and make video-clips in the Qiang language.
The authorities look set to give priority to the country’s stable economic growth in place of in ation control in the second half of the year, economists have said.
“It is a departure from the previous policies … which aimed to prevent the economy from overheating and keep ris-ing prices from evolving into entrenched inflation,” said Zhang Jun, director of the China Center for Economic Studies at Fudan University, yesterday.
The forecast follows a central
bank move over the weekend, which put stable and relatively swift economic growth as part of its top priority.
The central bank’s posi-tion is in turn in line with that of the top leadership, which has said that the authorities should “treat maintaining stable but rapid economic growth and control-ling excessive rises in prices as the top priorities in mac-roeconomic controls”, Xinhua has reported.
Previous policies to pre-vent the economy from over-heating and rein in inflation were set late last year, when the economy steamed ahead
with an 11.9 percent annual growth rate.That gure has cooled to 10.4 percent for the rst half of this year, amid expectations of the slowdown worsening.
Financial giant UBS has reaf- rmed its forecast of 10 percent GDP for the country this year, but lowered the forecast for 2009 from 9.5 percent to 8.8 percent.
“The Chinese economy is set to slide further,” said Wang Tao, head of the China economic research unit of UBS, citing a weaker global outlook and slower export-related invest-ment.
Wang also echoed Zhang’s view, that the authorities are looking to give stable economic growth more weight.
“The government is now somewhat more concerned about a sharper economic slowdown than inflation,” Wang said.
If that happened, she said, the authorities could allow room for local policy maneuvers to help re-orbit the economy onto a stable growth track, although an overall readjustment of the tight monetary policies would not be possible.
“We think this opens the door for policy stimulus that targets certain sectors and re-gions, while an overall easing of monetary and credit policy does not seem to be in the play yet,” she said.
“The local governments would be given more room to stimulate the economy.”
Zhang said policymakers may shift the focus of the blanket tightening policy to a “structural adjustment”, which
means policies would become more exible and more targeted toward different sectors.
“After the Olympic Games, more policies may come out to combat economic slowdown,” he said.
China’s economy will be “healthy” so long as its growth rate falls between 8 and 10 per-cent, said Wang Xiaoguang, a senior economist in Beijing. When the rate falls below 9 percent, the nation should start to relax policies, he said, adding that major stimulus measures should be taken if it goes down to below 8 percent.