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BEIJING, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- China saw its fixed asset investment rising 24.8 percent year-on-year in 2007, up 0.9 percentage points from 2006, despite the country's attempts to cool investment, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday.

The overall investment in assets last year stood at 13.7 trillion yuan (1.9 trillion U.S. dollars). 
The urban fixed-asset investment was 11.7 trillion yuan, representing an annual increase of 25.8 percent and up 1.5 percentage points from the previous year, NBS head Xie Fuzhan told a press conference in Beijing.
    Wang Tongsan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) observed that investment in construction, factories and other urban fixed assets was still growing "at a fast pace".
    The sizzling investment growth was achieved despite the government's cooling measures. China's central bank last year raised the deposit reserve requirement ratio ten times and the benchmark interest rate six times in a bid to curb loan growth.
    However, the central bank said earlier this month that the growth of renminbi loans began to slow down in the last two months of 2007, thanks to the tightening measures.
    Correspondingly, the urban fixed-asset investment figure for December alone was 19.6 percent, which had helped bring the annual figure down from 26.8 percent for the first 11 months.
    Xie also commented on the effect of the country's macro control measures citing a declining trend of investment growth in the second half.
    Investment growth for the third quarter was 25.3 percent, down 1.6 percentage points from the second quarter, and for the fourth quarter 23 percent, down 2.3 percentage points from the previous three months, according to Xie.
    However, he also noted that "investment in the real estate sector continued to grow rapidly".
    It scored a growth of 30.2 percent in 2007, up 8.4 percentage points from a year earlier, Xie said. Total investment in the sector was 2.5 trillion yuan.
    Wang Xiaoguang, a senior economist with the research institute under the National Development and Reform Commission, said he believed that the impressive growth in real estate spending reflected, at least in part, rising government spending on low-income housing.
    He said real estate developers should have restrained their investment in the second half following a series of tightening measures to cool the property market, including new housing loan policies to check the purchase of a second apartment in addition to repeated interest rate rises.
    As part of its tight monetary policy, the central bank raised the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks to a record 15 percent last week, up from 14.5 percent, the first such move in 2008.
    The central bank said the move aimed to draw back the excess liquidity on the market and control the possible bounce of the suppressed bank loans.
    CASS's Wang believed spending on investment could be expected to slow down a bit this year, as the country had listed the preventing of the national economy from overheating as one of its top macroeconomic priorities in 2008.

BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- The value of China's online travel market is to reach 3.84 billion yuan (519 million U.S. dollars) this year, with a projected growth rate of 70.7 percent, according to a nationwide survey

    The survey showed that China's online travel services market was worth 2.25 billion (300 million U.S. dollars) in 2007, with an estimated 65 percent expansion for the industry from 2006.
    Shanghai-based online travel service provider Ctrip.com (NASDAQ:CTRP) still held a steady command of the market with the highest penetration in large primary and second-tier cities, the survey showed.
    "There are two reasons for the acceleration: the Beijing Olympic Games and the further opening up of the domestic tourism market," said Fu Zhihua, director of the Data Center of the China Internet (DCCI) research department that conducted the survey.
    The effect was felt industry-wide, benefiting other players such as eLong (NASDAQ: LONG), China's second-biggest online travel agency, and Mango city.com launched by the Hong Kong China Travel Services (HKCTS) in 2005.
    The survey indicated that in two or three years, traditional and online travel agents will keep consolidating.
    The Netguide 2008 survey also forecast the trade volume would rise to 7.32 billion yuan (989 million U.S. dollars) in 2009.
    The survey, begun in January 2007, polled more than 300 websites, 270 enterprises and 50,786 people around the country.

BEIJING, Jan. 25 -- The city's mayor said Thursday he expects the local economy to reach 2 trillion yuan (277 billion U.S. dollars) by 2012.

    Mayor Han Zheng said in his work report that GDP in the financial hub grew by an estimated 12.6 percent to 1.2 trillion yuan last year.
    By 2012, GDP per capita will be more than 100,000 yuan for Shanghai's permanent residents, he said.

The city has maintained double-digit annual GDP growth for the past 16 years, although the target for last year was just 9 percent. This year's target is 10 percent.
    In his report, Han put forward goals to help realize "sound and rapid" economic growth in the "four centers" of international economics, finance, trade and shipping.
    "One of the key tasks in the years to 2012 is to quicken the pace of developing an industrial structure, with the service sector at its core, and increase its global competitiveness," Han told deputies to the city's congress.
    By 2012, Han said the service industry will be worth in excess of 1.1 trillion yuan and account for more than 80 percent of GDP in the city's central areas.
    The service sector is estimated to have grown by 621 billion yuan last year, to account for more than half the city's total GDP.
    Funding for research and development will be increased to 3 percent of GDP per year until 2012, Han said.
    Deputies to the congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) welcomed yesterday's report, saying the city has made remarkable progress in social and economic areas since 2003.
    Mao Zengdian, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University, said: "Mayor Han did not say much about the progress the city has already made in his report, but the achievement is really stunning."
    Huge progress has been made in regard to the city's efforts to establish itself as an international shipping center and an air traffic hub, he said.
    According to official figures, Shanghai is the world's second largest cargo center handling more than 26 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) a year.
    Last year, the city's two airports handled 51.6 million passengers, up 110 percent on 2003, and 2.9 million tons of cargo, up 170 percent.
    Zhang Jianzu, a deputy to the nation's CPPCC, said: "We have seen outstanding progress in Shanghai and in the national economy.
    "But both the city and the country are facing pressure from skyrocketing property prices and high inflation."
    But more measures will still have to be adopted to ensure migrant workers and people in rural areas share the fruits of economic growth, Zhang said.
(Source: China Daily)

BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhua) -- A 50-city quarterly survey conducted by the People's Bank of China (PBOC) found that in the first quarter, 49.2 percent of the 20,000 respondents said prices had become intolerable.

According to the results, released on Thursday, the proportion was a record high, up from 25.9 percent in the first quarter of 2007.
    The central bank's report said that 47.5 percent of the respondents felt prices were rather high but still tolerable, down16.6 percentage points from a year earlier.
    It attributed the changes to recent price rises for food and the impact of the severe winter weather on prices of grain, edible oil, vegetables and fruits in southern China.
    The PBOC said that 64.8 percent of the respondents expected further price rises in the second quarter, down 15.9 percentage points from a quarter earlier.
    The report also said that 35.2 percent of the respondents said their incomes had increased, up 6.7 percentage points from the fourth quarter but two percentage points lower than the record, which was set in the first quarter of 2007.
    About 22.6 percent of those surveyed were confident about their future income, down 3.2 percentage points from a quarter earlier.
    As to interest rates, those who were satisfied with current levels -- following several central-bank increases -- accounted for 51.4 percent in the first quarter, up 11.8 percentage points from a year earlier.
    The report found that 35.4 percent of those surveyed generally put their money into banks, up 5.2 percentage points from the quarter-earlier level, and that 27.6 percent tended to invest in stocks and mutual funds, down 8.2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.
    In a related development, the PBOC survey of 5,485 entrepreneurs found the confidence index went up 0.6 percentage points to 77.4 percent in the first quarter. Among this group, 19.3 percent considered the economy to be overheating, down from 21.6 percent a quarter earlier.