Faced with surging inflation, shaky loans and a stockmarket bubble that has grown by more than 400 per cent in two years, the Chinese Government in recent months has been pulling all the policy levers at its disposal to control growth.
Ther central bank has raised interest rates five times this year and increased reserve requirements for commercial lenders eight-fold. Last month the central planning agency imposed a price freeze on cooking oil, electricity, water and other household essentials to try to stem inflation that had hit an 11-year high, although late on Thursday a senior economic planning official said that annual inflation had fallen from 6.5 per cent in August to 6.2 per cent in September, thanks to a big fall in pork prices.
