Premier Wen Jiabao meets the press after the annual session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing March 14. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Monday rejected calls for a faster rise in the value of China's currency, the renminbi, citing the impact on jobs and domestic companies.

"The appreciation of the RMB must be gradual, because it affects jobs and raises pressure on enterprises and employment," said Wen at a press conference after the end of the annual parliamentary session.

"We must maintain the overall social stability."

The premier reiterated the promise that China would continue to gradually increase the flexibility of its exchange rate."We will continue to stick to the reform of the formation mechanism of the RMB exchange rate," he said.

The Chinese currency has appreciated 57.9 percent from the level of 1994, and since that year, China has conducted three major reforms on RMB's exchange rate formation mechanism, according to Wen.

"Our reforms have aimed to adopt a market-based, managed floating exchange rate regime which is tied to a basket of foreign currencies instead of pegging to the US dollar," Wen said.

Economic growth

China lowered its annual economic growth target to seven percent for the period of 2011-2015 from 7.5 percent for the previous five years, according to the new five-year program adopted by the top legislature.

When asked about the change of target, the premier said it is not easy to achieve a high-quality and efficient annual growth rate of seven percent during the 2011-2015 period.

Given China's increasingly large economic aggregate and the need to raise the quality and efficiency of growth, "a seven-percent growth rate is not a low target," Wen said.

"The lowering of the target not only demonstrates the government's determination but also indicates a major move to transform the country's economic growth pattern," Wen said.

"We should make full use of this opportunity to adjust the economic growth pattern and address the unbalanced, uncoordinated or unsustainable factors that have existed in China's economy for a long time," said Wen.

He added that China must strike a balance between economic growth speed, job creation and inflation control.

"A fast growth speed would bring more jobs but lead to high inflationary pressure, while A slower speed means less new jobs and risks economic recession," the premier said.

With the economy expected to grow slower during the 2011-2015 period, the Chinese government will make every effort to cope with the rising employment pressure, Wen said.

"I think this poses a great test to the government, but we have the determination that we will ease the pressure successfully," Wen said.

The government must pay close attention to economic restructuring, and give priority to developing small and medium-sized enterprises, especially small hi-tech firms, and developing the service sector, including producer services, which would help create more jobs, said Wen.

Housing prices

China will focus on building more and better government-subsidized houses to curb the runaway housing prices, said Wen.

"Speeding up the construction of government-subsidized houses is a key measure to curb housing prices. It will cut demand and help solve the problem of the real estate market," he said.

China will build 10 million welfare apartments respectively in 2011 and 2012. A total of 36 million such houses will be built from 2011 to 2015, Wen said.

Most of the these apartments, except those renovated from bungalows, will be used for low-income renting, he said.

The central government will appropriate 103 billion yuan to local governments for these projects, he said, urging local governments to expand investment in this field and extensively utilize social resources.

The government will give priority to the land supply of government-subsidized housing projects, he added.

Wen also stressed that those apartments must be of high quality, safe and environment-friendly. "It is a great opportunity for China's real estate industry. Losing it would be a shame," he said.

China model?

When asked about the talk of "China model", Wen said China never sees its development as "a model" because China is still exploring the way of reform and economic construction.

All countries can have their own development paths which are suitable for their own national conditions and "we respect the choice of their people," Wen said at a press conference after the conclusion of the annual parliamentary session.

"We have embarked on a development path that fits China's national conditions," Wen said, noting China is still a developing nation with large population, weak economic foundation and uneven development.

The Chinese government will continue to focus on economic construction and vigorously promote economic development and social progress, Wen said.

China will also continue to "put people's interests first" and strive for "comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development," Wen said.

China will further promote social fairness and justice and maintain social stability and harmony, he added, pledging further protection of democratic rights of the people and further play to the initiative and creativity of its people.

Talking about the turbulence in some western Asian and northern African countries, Wen said China is very concerned about the situations there, but any analogy between China and those countries is "not right".

Political reform

Political reform should be pushed forward in an orderly way under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and requires a stable and harmonious social conditions, said Wen.

It is by no means easy to push forward political reform in a country with a population of 1.3 billion, he said, adding that he believed "reform is an eternal theme of history".

The political reform and economic reform should be pushed forward in a coordinated way, he told reporters, saying political reform offers guarantee for economic reform.

"Without political reform, economic reform would not succeed."

Private sector of the economy

The government is formulating more detailed rules to further boost the development of the non-state sector of the economy, Wen told the press conference.

The State Council published a set of new rules, dubbed "New 36 Guidelines", in May last year to encourage the private sector's involvement in infrastructure, public housing, public services and financial services, in addition to the areas already open to private investment according to the previous "36 Guidelines" issued in 2005.

In both of the two sets of "36 Guidelines," China promises that it will treat all enterprises, regardless of different kinds of ownership, as the same in terms of laws and policies, including fiscal, taxation, financial and market access policies and measures.

Wen acknowledged that China has not fully implemented those polices, which has prompted private business owners to complain about invisible or visible barriers in their development.

"We are now formulating detailed rules for the implementation of the 'New 36 Guidelines,'" he said.

"The two documents will further boost the development of the non-state sector of the economy," he said.

Wen stressed that the government's principle is to consolidate and develop the state-owned sector of the economy and at the same time, to support, encourage and guide the development of the private sector of the economy.

"I don't think we have such a problem as the state-owned enterprises forging ahead while privately-held enterprises falling behind. Nor do we have the opposite problem," he said.

"We encourage different economic entities to compete with each other and reinforce common development," he added.