The World Bank said yesterday that China should be able to meet both the challenges of the current global downturn and the development targets set out in its 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10).

"Despite the impacts of the global financial storm and economic slowdown, China's economic growth momentum remains sound," the bank said in a report released yesterday on its mid-term evaluation of the implementation of China's 11th Five-Year Plan.

China's year-on-year GDP growth weakened to 9 percent for 2008 from 13 percent in 2007. Analysts widely believed that the first and second quarter of this year would be the worst times for the Chinese economy, which is then predicted to gain strength from the third quarter.

"China is a developing and transitional economy, which has much room for growth, and the crisis would not change that," said Dong Xian'an, economist of China Southwest Securities.

China's annual GDP growth target for the 2006-10 period is 7.5 percent, which is achievable, according to the World Bank report. This year, world attention has been focused on whether its growth can reach 8 percent, an unofficial but oft-cited target.

Regarding the 2006-10 development plan, the World Bank's country director for China, David Dollar, said "significant progress has been made toward several of the major objectives of the blueprint, but important challenges remain."

Economic growth has far exceeded expectations, and considerable progress has been made toward the plan's most important social objectives: improving basic public services in social protection, education, health, and conditions in rural areas (even though income disparities between rural and urban areas continue to widen), the report said.

Progress on the environmental and resource use objectives has been mixed. Insufficient progress has been made in reducing energy intensity, but improvements were seen in reducing air and water pollution, treating industrial solid waste and increasing the efficiency of water use, it said.

(China Daily February 13, 2009)