While acknowledging the dangers to China from rising tensions with trading partners and the turmoil in international financial markets, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says, however, that rising prices are the "biggest concern" for ordinary Chinese people. Delivering his annual report Wednesday on the work of the government to the annual meeting of China's legislature, he offered numerous measures to both sustain growth and curb inflation in the short term.

But, as Andrew Batson reports, the premier kept the focus on a broader set of long-term solutions that he hopes will reduce China's vulnerability to those and other potential challenges. A major part of that agenda is streamlining the central-government bureaucracy into fewer but stronger agencies to cut red tape. The legislature will discuss and approve the plans in coming days.

Mr. Wen called for changes to make China's economy more efficient, equitable and environmentally friendly as it faces the contradictory challenges of quickening domestic inflation and a global slowdown. He told legislators that the government must "concentrate on changing the way the economy develops and adjust the economic structure to improve the quality and efficiency of economic growth."

Read Andrew Batson's report:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120472207074813499.html

China Premier Proposes
Economic Adjustments

BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called for changes to make China's economy more efficient, equitable and environmentally friendly as it faces the contradictory challenges of quickening domestic inflation and a global slowdown.

Delivering China's version of the U.S. presidential State of the Union address, Mr. Wen told legislators the government must "concentrate on changing the way the economy develops and adjust the economic structure to improve the quality and efficiency of economic growth." The speech, on the first day of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, hit Mr. Wen's signature themes of curbing waste and pollution, increasing spending on social services, and ensuring that growth boosts jobs and incomes.