China's economic reform will focus on four key areas this year, which may lead to measures aimed to expand investment and reform pricing of resource products, a senior official said Thursday.

"The global international crisis has brought severe challenges, as well as rare opportunities, to the country's reform endeavors," said Peng Sen, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner.

The country will push forward reforms in four key areas this year, he told a conference on the reform work held:

-- To advance reforms aimed to maintain stable and relatively fast growth by expanding domestic demand. The country will further widen market access of non-government investment.

-- To boost reforms that serve economic restructuring and a transition in the growth mode. The country will promote reforms of resource product pricing to enhance the role of market forces in allocating resources. Industrial structure will be improved with energy-conservation mechanisms. In addition, the country will boost the development of non-public sector and small and medium-sized enterprises.

-- To push reforms in areas that are of long-term interest to the country, including rural reform that aims for an integrated development of both rural and urban areas, reform in fiscal and taxation systems, and reform of the financial system.

-- To encourage pilot efforts aimed to deepen economic reform and enhance institutional innovation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2009)