Your question reminds me of my visit to some ASEAN countries last year. During my visit in Vietnam, I reached principled consensus with the Vietnamese leaders about China-Vietnam cooperation in maritime joint development, on the land and in the

financial sector. I was curious about how the ordinary people would think about this. So later in the evening, I took some time out of the schedule and visited a small local shop. The shopowner instantly recognized me and she said that she would like to have more Chinese customers. They would bring more businesses to her shop. I asked her how she thought about China’s relationship with its neighbors. She said there should be peace and friendship. Peace, friendship and peaceful co-existence, I believe, represent the common aspirations of all people in China and its neighbors. As long as we all work together to expand common interests and narrow differences, we can live with each other in harmony, bringing greater benefits to our people.

[英国路透社记者]想请教总理，有一个经济问题。中国经济去年增长7.7%。请问总理，您上任一年最大的挑战、最大的困难是什么？再有就是您觉得亟待解决的问题还有哪些？谢谢。

Reuters: China’s economy grew at 7.7% last year. In the past year since you

became Chinese premier, what do you think is the biggest challenge and difficulty and what are the pressing issues that need to be resolved?

[李克强]我确实很佩服你们这些驻华记者，能这么流利地说中文。要说去年最大的挑战，那还是经济下行压力加大的挑战。一度中国的中央财政收入出现负增长，金融领域还有所谓“钱荒”，银行间隔夜拆借利率超过了13%，而且用电量、货运量的增幅也大幅回落。国际上也出现了一些舆论，说中国经济可能要硬着陆，还给出了指标，说增长可能只有3%到4%。而对我们来说，财政和货币政策运用空间又很有限，宏观调控确实面临多难选择。怎么办？遇万难还须放胆。当然破困局要用智慧，我们保持定力，创新宏观调控的思路和方式，明确了经济运行的合理区间，就是增长和就业不能越出下限，通胀不能突破上限，而且着力促改革、调结构，让市场发力。正是在以习近平同志为总书记的党中央领导下，经过全国人民的共同奋斗，我们顶住压力，实现了经济社会发展的主要预期目标。

Li Keqiang: I truly admire all these resident journalists of foreign media in China for speaking Chinese so well. The biggest challenge last year was the increased downward pressure on our economy. Central government revenue registered negative growth at one point. There was the so-called “money squeeze” in the financial sector last June. Inter-bank lending rate exceeded 13%. And there was a slump in the growth of

electricity consumption and cargo transport volume. There was this view in the

international community that the Chinese economy would suffer a hard landing and China’s growth would drop to 3-4%. Moreover, we had only very limited room for

manoeuvre in carrying out fiscal and monetary policies, and we were faced with multiple