China 'logs double-digit growth in 2010'

Pedestrians walk past a complex of high rise residential buildings in Shanghai. China's economy grew 10.3 percent last year but inflation exceeded the government's full-year target, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television has said on its website. Beijing has been trying to slow the economy amid soaring food and property costs.

A worker sews at a garment factory in Pinghu, some 100 kms from Shanghai. China's economy grew 10.3 percent last year but inflation exceeded the government's full-year target, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television has said on its website.

Customers shop for vegetables in a Beijing supermarket. China's economy grew 10.3 percent last year but inflation exceeded the government's full-year target, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television has said on its website.

AFP - China's economy grew 10.3 percent last year but inflation exceeded the government's full-year target, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television said on its website Wednesday.

The broadcaster cited unnamed central bank sources as saying the figures had been "leaked" a day before the government was due to release key economic data for December and for 2010.

The growth in gross domestic product compares with a revised increase of 9.2 percent in 2009 and marks the fastest annual expansion since the onset of the global financial crisis -- defying Beijing's efforts to cool the economy.

Analysts had predicted that the world's second largest economy grew by around 10 percent last year on the back of strong demand for Chinese exports and massive investment in the country's property sector.

China's consumer price index, a key measure of inflation, rose 3.3 percent from a year earlier over the 12 months, exceeding Beijing's full-year target of three percent as food costs soared, the report said.

However December inflation slowed to 4.6 percent year-on-year compared with 5.1 percent in November, which was the fastest pace in more than two years.

"It might take some of the air out of the argument that China is about to experience runaway inflation," said Mark Williams, an economist at London-based research firm Capital Economics.

The producer price index, which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, jumped 5.9 percent over the year, as manufacturers passed on the surging cost of global commodities.

Beijing has been trying to slow the economy and bring inflation under control amid fears that soaring food and property costs are straining household budgets and threatening to spark social unrest.

Analysts have blamed the government's massive stimulus measures over the past two years to combat the financial crisis for flooding the market with liquidity, which in turn has led to rising housing prices and inflation.

Authorities have taken repeated steps to turn off the spigot of bank lending that saw new loans nearly double to 9.6 trillion yuan in 2009 as banks heeded the government's call to spur the economy amid the downturn.

The central bank on Friday again ordered banks to increase the amount of money they keep in reserve, effectively putting a cap on lending, after raising interest rates for the second time since October.

Policymakers aim to cut new lending for 2011 by 10 percent from last year, state media reported Tuesday, after new loans in 2010 hit 7.95 trillion yuan, exceeding the 7.5 trillion-yuan official target.

Property prices have remained stubbornly high, despite a range of government measures such as hiking minimum down payments on property transactions to at least 30 percent in a bid to avoid a damaging price bubble.

Housing prices in China's major cities posted their fourth straight month-on-month rise in December and sales picked up pace -- putting the cost of an apartment out of the reach of many first-home buyers.

Other data to be released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Thursday includes fixed-asset investment, industrial production and retail sales.