Singapore's Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has praised China for its response to the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the current global financial storm, which is believed to have serious impact on the world economy. In a recent interview with China's Central Television Station, Goh said that China held its national currency and did not devalue it in 1997, which would have put further pressure on other currencies, local English newspaper The Straits Times reported on Saturday.

Goh was quoted as saying that this time, China, together with the Europeans and Americans, also lowered its interest rate. Otherwise, there would have been some competitive leakages of funds to the Chinese currency of Renminbi.

Echoing Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's speech that China's best contribution to the current global financial crisis was to keep the country's economy humming, Goh said that if China concentrated on growing the Chinese economy through fiscal policy as well as monetary policy, this would be a huge contribution towards tackling the current financial problem.

While warning that if China's economy slowed, coupled with the United States and other major European economies, the world would go into a very deep recession, he said that if China could grow, China could become for the time being a very big, maybe the biggest, engine of growth in the coming two or three years.

(Xinhua News Agency October 18, 2008)