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Economist: China can speed up world's economic recovery

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-04-01 10:15

China is in a strong position to boost its own economy thanks to its large foreign reserves, and can speed up the world's process of recovery, a British economist said in London on Tuesday.

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"With its massive foreign exchange reserves, China is in a strong position to provide a fiscal boost to its own economy and would prove to be one of the key players in solving the global crisis", Panicos Demetriates, an economics professor at Leicester University, said on the eve of the London G20 summit which starts on Thursday.

Demetriates, who was a World Bank consultant during the Asian financial turmoil, suggested China can get out of the crisis earlier by improving welfare provisions to its people, and bringing forward planned public investments in health, education and environment.

China's economic development in the last 30 years has been impressive, Demetriates said. Being the world's largest exporter of textiles, toys, laptop computers, cell phones, digital cameras etc, China indirectly helps Western consumers to improve their living standards, as the products it provides are good to use and cheap in price, he said. The successful export-led growth strategy has also helped China to garner the largest volume of foreign reserves in the world, he added.

By making adjustments to its portfolio of overseas investments in crisis stricken countries, "China could influence the speed with which the global economy comes out of the crisis," Demetriates said.

"China has the potential to reap substantial investment returns when the global economy comes out of the current crisis by investing more wisely now," he said.

The root of the current global financial crisis, according to the professor, lies in the lack of transparency in Western financial markets and institutions, which bred a culture of greed among bankers.

Some bankers gamble and speculate with investors' money, and pay themselves handsomely. Their gambling activities were not only unproductive, but have also fuelled an asset price bubble which has now burst, Demetriates said.

To make things worse, US and British regulators did little to prevent the crisis from happening, with the excuse of not to interfere the free market too much, he said.