"The cause of China's inflation pressure is complicated," said Liu Shijin, vice director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, who called it a "Chinese characteristic", "it is mixed with both domestic and international factors, short-term or long-term."

"The focus of our policy against this pressure should be to limit the inflation with our acceptability, so as to gain more time to speed up economic transformation and pave the way for future development," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2008)