GUANGZHOU, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The Guangzhou Development District (GDD), the largest of its kind in China in terms of GDP, will spend 30 billion yuan (4.38 billion U.S. dollars) in the coming three years to help thousands of enterprises cope with the global financial crisis. Xue Xiaofeng, director of the GDD administrative commission, said on Tuesday the government spending would trigger another 70-billion-yuan investment from the private sector.

China's economy may grow 9.5 percent this year, down from 11.9 percent last year, a rate hurt mainly by the global financial crisis and natural disasters, an official with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said yesterday. The biggest negative effect on the economy has been the global financial crisis which emerged in the second half of this year and has led to huge losses, said CASS economist Li Peilin who led a group reporting on China's social conditions for the year.

Wang Luolin, a renowned Chinese economist, forecast on Monday that the rate of China's economic growth will continue to decelerate until at least the third quarter next year, when it may begin to increase. Wang, who used to serve as the deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also said the country's growth could be expected to stay between eight and nine percent, "which remained the highest growth of all economies", over the following two or three years after the pick-up.

China has warned its food producers to rid their products of illegal additives in a latest move to restore trust hurt by the recent tainted milk scandal. The notice, published Monday by a joint investigation led by the Health Ministry, the State Food and Drug Administration, and another seven government departments, blacklisted 17 nonfood substances that could be added to food production.

The latest tests have found that Chinese liquid milk met the new temporary restrictions on melamine, the country's top quality control agency said on Friday.

The number of cholera cases in China's southernmost Hainan Province has risen to 51 from 37 on Sunday, the provincial health department said.

MOSCOW, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia issued a joint communique here Tuesday, pledging further efforts to strengthen strategic coordination and deepen cooperation in various fields. The communique was signed by visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the 13th regular prime ministers' talks between the two countries.

BEIJING, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged to implement the responsibility system which was designed 10 years ago for the building of a clean government and improvement of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) work style. In his instructions for a teleconference held here on Monday to mark the tenth anniversary of the issuance of the responsibility system by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, Hu, also the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said the responsibility system is fundamental for further pushing forward the building of a clean government, improvement of the Party's work style and the anti-corruption drive.

BEIJING, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- The latest tests on Chinese milk powder have found no traces of melamine, the country's top quality control agency said on Friday. It was the third round of tests for the industrial chemical since the the breaking of the tainted baby formula scandal that left at least three infants dead and sickened more than 50,000 others, according to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). The tests covered 113 batches of baby formula from 20 brands in nine provinces and 267 batches of other milk powder from 72 brands in 18 provinces, the agency said.

BEIJING, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- China's central bank on Wednesday announced cuts in both the interest rate and reserve-requirement ratio in the latest effort to boost the domestic economy amid worries over the deepening global financial crisis. The deposit and lending rates would be lowered by 0.27 percentage points from Thursday and the reserve-requirement ratio would be down by 0.5 percentage points from Oct. 15, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said. "This was mainly out of concerns over an economic slowdown," said Ba Shusong, deputy chief of the Finance Research Institute under the Development Research Center of the State Council.