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| Xie Xuren, China |
Xie keeps the China fires burning
XIE XUREN, CHINA’S minister of finance, took office in September 2007 when he replaced Jin Renqing. The 12 months that followed were extraordinary even by the high standards of newsworthiness that China has set in recent years, bringing a devastating earthquake and the spectacle of the Olympics. Behind these headline-grabbing incidents, though, another amazing China story continued: despite rising commodity prices, global financial turmoil and widespread fears over inflation and consumer spending slowdown, China’s growth continued at a rate of 10%. The year saw the country’s policymakers address the complex task of maintaining double-digit growth while managing difficult global environment and keeping inflation under control, and it is for their overall success in this field that Xie, the public face of China’s economic policymaking, wins the award.
It was a busy first year in office for the 60-year-old Xie, who was born in Ningbo city in the Zhejiang province of eastern China and served in various provincial administrative roles before joining the ministry of finance in 1990. Despite the focus of the world’s media on the earthquake and the Olympics, Xie’s central battle over the past 12 months has been to execute effectively the Communist Party’s policies for dealing with the issues of growth and inflation against a backdrop of turmoil in the world’s financial markets.