Economy the focus as China political session ends

BEIJING — China must remain alert to fight any rebound in the economic crisis in the next several years, Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday.

Wen was speaking just after the country's annual legislative session ended by approving a budget that extends job-creation and welfare programs as Beijing tries to deal with a rapidly expanding rich-poor gap at the root of many of its social stability problems.

The National People's Congress, at the end of nearly two weeks of meetings, also passed an amendment to the election law to improve representation for rural areas. Previously, rural delegates represented four times as many people as their urban counterparts, but the amendment erases the distinction, an acknowledgment of the need to buttress the interests of the dwindling farming population.

Wen said China "must have firm confidence" in dealing with any economic problems.

"The only way out and hope when facing difficulties lie in our own efforts," Wen said.

China, the world's third-largest economy, escaped the worst of the global financial crisis by ordering $1.4 trillion in bank lending and government stimulus.

Although economic growth rebounded to 10.7 percent in the final quarter of 2009, authorities say the global outlook is still uncertain, amid worries that the torrent of lending is adding to inflation and fueling a dangerous bubble in stock and real estate prices.

Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo said job one was ensuring a balance between maintaining steady economic growth and furthering the overall restructuring of the economy away from exports and investment.

China must "integrate the resolution of the current problems with long-term development and make substantial steps in accelerating the transformation of the pattern of economic development," Wu, the Communist Party's second-highest ranking official, said in his address to the congress' closing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.

Government spending will be increased by 10 percent to fuel the economic recovery, with more money for low-cost housing, pensions, and other social programs for the country's 1.3 billion people.

The priorities extend Wen and President Hu Jintao's yearslong efforts to spread the benefits of economic growth more broadly across a rapidly changing society. This year, inflation is a looming challenge, with housing prices soaring and worrying rises in food prices that consume as much as 40 percent of household incomes.