He said that the country's economy has continued to develop along the healthy track of fast growth, high efficiency and low inflation.

He made the remarks in an address titled "China's Economy: Greater Opening-up and Growing Prosperity" to the on-going Sixth World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention in Nanjing, capital city of Jiangsu Province in east China.

"Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and particularly, since the introduction of reform and opening-up, China's economy has flourished day by day and grown rapidly. At this new starting point in history, China is moving steadily towards greater opening-up and economic prosperity," he said.

He said that China's economy has withstood rigorous tests in recent years in the complicated and changeable economic climate. He said that China has successfully fended off the impact of the Asia financial crisis and achieved a sustained and rapid development.

Zhu noted that in the first half of this year, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 7.9 percent over the same period of last year.

He said that the first eight months of this year have witnessed an increase of 10.4 percent in the added value of industry over the same period of last year, 24.7 percent in revenue, 18.9 percent in fixed asset investment, 10.1 percent in social retail sales of consumption commodities, 1.2 percent in CPI, 9.6 percent in import and export which amounted to 330.532 billion U.S. dollars, and 7.3 percent in export which reached 170.994 billion U. S. dollars.

According to Zhu, foreign direct investment that China actually used reached 27.44 billion U.S. dollars in the first eight months of the year, representing an increase of 20.4 percent over the same period of last year. By the middle of September, the foreign exchange reserves have amounted to 193.5 billion U.S. dollars.

He said that the financial sector is also in good shape.

(People's Daily 09/219/2001)