[영문] China's Wen calls for steps to reverse slump

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, right, holds the wheel of a tractor Changfa Group in Changzhou City during his three-day visit to factories in China's eastern province of Jiangsu.

China's top economic official is calling for quick action to pull the country out of its slump.

"We must do our first-quarter economic work with all our strength to reverse this downward economic trend as quickly as possible," Premier Wen Jiabao said Monday at a Cabinet meeting, according to a government statement.

The statement mentioned no new initiatives. It said Wen, the country's No. 3 leader, called for more efforts to carry out a multibillion-dollar stimulus plan and measures to help individual industries.

"This is the hardest year for our country's economic development since we entered the new century," Wen was quoted as saying.

China's economic growth slowed sharply last year, after a 13 percent expansion in 2007, and economists are forecasting growth as low as 5 percent this year. The government launched a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus plan in November.

Wen was quoted by the state press earlier this month as saying efforts to break out of the slump were starting to show results but the government has yet to release detailed data.

The slump in global demand for Chinese goods has led to factory closures and layoffs, especially in the export-driven southeast. Protests by laid-off workers have occurred, and the government worries about unrest as jobless workers stream back to their villages.

Beijing has given tax cuts and other aid to auto and steel producers and officials say they are working on measures for 10 other industries.

Power companies are to receive up to 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in subsidies from the agency that controls China's main state-owned companies, the newspaper China Business Journal reported. The money is meant to help compensate for losses in last year's devastating earthquake in China's southwest, it said.

A spokesman for the agency, the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said he could not confirm the report. He would give only his surname, Su.

The government gave 30 million yuan ($4.4 million) to one power company in southern China in early January to compensate for earthquake damage.

By Joe McDonald (AP)