China's economic and social development face a host of good opportunities and favorable conditions in the 11th Five-Year Guidelines period (2006-2010), an official said Thursday.

 

Xu Lin, deputy director of the Development Plan Bureau under the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC), made the remark at the sixth donation coordination meeting on development cooperation.

 

In the next five years, the advantage of sufficient labor supply and a high saving rate can still be maintained in China, and the upgrading and diversification of domestic consumption will create a huge domestic demand, Xu acknowledged.

 

The accelerated urbanization process will further stimulate economic growth, and the enhanced industrial technology progress will improve the competitiveness of the whole economy, he said.

 

Moreover, he added, the integration of the domestic and global economy will expand the frontier of resource allocation and create still greater space for China's economic growth.

 

The enhanced institutional reform will go on liberalizing the market entities, make the market more transparent and foreseeable, which will further improve the efficiency of the resource allocation, he said.

 

Nevertheless, he listed some unfavorable factors, such as the emerging bottleneck of the main natural resource supply, environmental pollution, increased social conflicts, the shortage of skilled labor force and an aging population structure.

 

The main tasks for the new 11th Five-Year Guidelines include maintaining relatively high economic growth, speeding up rural development, narrowing the rural-urban gap, adjusting the industrial structure, enhancing the service sectors, coordinating regional development, building a resource-conservation and environment-friendly society, improving capacity of innovation and deepening institutional reform, Xu said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2006)