China’s economy to grow by 8.2 percent in 2013

China's economic growth is expected to speed up to 8.2 percent in 2013 from the 7.7 percent rate forecast for 2012, a leading think tank said Wednesday.

"China's top economic priority is to stabilize economic growth, due to world economic uncertainties and even downside risks," the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said in its Blue Book of China's Economy 2013 released Wednesday.

This is in line with the central government's plans to "maintain continuity and stability in macroeconomic policies to promote a stable increase in investment and boost domestic demand," according to a statement after a meeting Tuesday of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, presided over by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

The meeting came ahead of an annual economic work conference expected to be held in early December, which will set economic policies for the coming year.

The most effective and direct measure to prevent economic growth from slowing is to stabilize investment growth by appropriately increasing the fiscal deficit for 2013 and adding investment for infrastructure construction, said Li Xuesong, a researcher at the CASS and deputy editor-in-chief of the blue book.

It is vital to increase the fiscal deficit for 2013 or the economic situation faced by China will be serious, Tian Yun, vice president of the China Macro Economics Institute, told the Global Times Wednesday.

Tian suggested increasing the deficit to 1.5 trillion yuan ($241 billion), or 3 percent of the country's GDP, so that the world's second largest economy can have more room to handle economic challenges in the coming year.

China's fiscal deficit amounted to 850 billion yuan in 2011.

It will be hard for China to achieve its objective of 10 percent growth in exports this year, as exports in the first 10 months grew by just 6.3 percent, said Pei Changhong, director of the Institute of Economics at the CASS.

The political bureau meeting Tuesday also stated that controls on the real estate sector would be maintained.

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