People's Congress in China to focus on economy

The Chinese national legislature begins its tightly scripted annual meeting Thursday with an agenda dominated by the Communist Party's two main concerns: riding out(安全渡过) the global economic crisis and keeping citizens' unhappiness with their lot from boiling over(发怒, 激动) into public unrest(动乱).

Both look achievable, political analysts and economists here say, but perhaps not without spending even more than the 4 trillion yuan, or $584 billion, that Chinese leaders have already pledged to stimulate a slumping(低迷) economy.

In seeming anticipation, stock markets from Shanghai to Wall Street soared Wednesday after fresh suggestions that the government was ready to announce new spending measures.

On Thursday, in an address to about 3,000 delegates at the National People's Congress, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is expected by many analysts to set an 8 percent growth target for China's gross domestic product in 2009, the same as in previous years. The government has long said that such a rate is needed to hold down(抑制) unemployment and the potential for social unrest. The Chinese economy logged a growth rate of 9 percent last year, with a sharp slowdown in the last quarter.

But a number of analysts say they believe that a 2009 growth rate of 6.5 percent or 7 percent, meager by recent Chinese standards, is increasingly likely. Some financial analysts predicted this week that the government would propose spending vast new amounts to head off(阻止) a sharper decline, although the consensus view is that new spending, if any, will be more modest.