Beijing - China's ruling Communist Party on Sunday promised to boost domestic demand and adopt flexible fiscal policies aimed at maintaining economic stability amid the global financial crisis. The Central Committee, led by President Hu Jintao, said the 70 million party members should "strengthen awareness of crises and face up to challenges" to respond to a less stable global economy and "deepening financial market turmoil".
"We should make flexible and careful macroeconomic policies," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the committee as saying in a statement issued after a four-day meeting on economic policy.
"We should step up efforts to boost domestic demand, particularly domestic consumption and keep the economy, the financial sector and the capital market stable," the statement said.
"We should continue keeping social stability and pushing the country's economy towards sound and fast development," it said.
The party said China's overall economic situation remained good despite some "notable contradictions and problems".
China's exports have slowed and stock markets have fallen along with those of the United States and other nations. But the global financial crisis has had a relatively mild effect on China so far.
World Bank Chief Economist Justin Lin on Saturday said he expected China to "weather through this crisis in a much better shape than many other developing countries".
"First, China has such large foreign reserves; and secondly, China has capital controls, so China in a way can insulate itself by building a firewall against the contagion," the agency quoted Lin as saying in Washington.
"And third, China has a very strong fiscal position because in the past four years the government has run quite a substantial fiscal surplus," Lin said.
China's central bank last week cut its base interest rates and the reserve ratio for commercial banks, in moves designed to bolster the economy against fallout from the global financial crisis.
State media have reported recent telephone discussions on the financial crisis between Chinese leaders and their counterparts in nations including the United States and Australia.
