China values its friendship with Portuguese-speaking countries and is ready to provide help to those in Asia and Africa within China's capacity. Since the launch of the forum, China has signed framework agreements to offer 6.09 billion yuan worth of concessional loans, reduced or canceled 230 million yuan worth of matured debts, and trained 7,600 professionals for Asian and African Portuguese-speaking countries. All eight assistance measures pledged by China at the last ministerial meeting have been implemented.

Now let me take this opportunity to announce major highlights of the 18 new and greater assistance measures China will implement in the next three years, which include the following:

Many of you follow trends in the Chinese economy closely. Let me give you a briefing about latest developments. Despite the weak recovery of the world economy in recent years and growing impact of deep-seated imbalances within China, the Chinese economy has been operating within a reasonable range, achieving steady growth and continued progress in restructuring and upgrading at the same time. It remains one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world and contributes over 25 percent to world economic growth. The 6.7 percent growth in the first half of this year is by no means easy, given the size of our 10 trillion-dollar economy. The increment of 6.7 percent growth, over 800 billion U.S dollars a year, is in fact bigger than that generated by double-digit growth in the past, amounting to the economic aggregate of a medium-sized country.

Coming to the third quarter, the Chinese economy is not only continuing with the good momentum seen in the first half of the year, but also showing some positive changes with bigger contribution by consumption and services to the economic growth and improvement of major indicators which were previously weak or declining. Growth rate of industrial output, corporate performance and investment are all looking up. Downturn in private investment, in particular, has been curbed. Expectations have improved.

Overall, the Chinese economy this year, especially in the third quarter, has performed better than what we expected. Employment, in particular, has remained basically stable. Each year in the past three years, more than 13 million new urban jobs were created. In the first nine months of this year, the number stood at 10.67 million, maintaining this rate of job creation. In September, the surveyed urban unemployment rate in 31 big cities fell below 5 percent, the first time in recent years. For China, a big developing country of more than 1.3 billion people, employment is of primary importance. The main purpose of growth, after all, is to ensure job creation and improve people's well-being.

Having said all this, we should not lose sight of the downward pressure the Chinese economy still faces. To keep the economy stable, we need to not only maintain aggregate demand, but also speed up supply-side structural reform to improve the quality and efficiency of the supply system. Now, there is certain talk about risks in China's debts and the property market. These issues should be viewed objectively and put into perspective. The debt risk in China is controllable overall. The main problem now is unbalanced debt structure. China's government debt ratio is relatively low among major economies with merely 16 percent for the central government. Though the ratio at the local levels is higher,borrowing by local governments is getting better regulated, and used mainly for development, rather than welfare handouts. Most debts are asset-backed and generate returns. The problem with leverage mainly lies in relatively high leverage ratio in non-financial companies. This is closely related to fledgling and not mature state of China's capital market, high propensity to save with the savings rate above 50 percent, and a financing structure with banks in a predominant position. China's debts are mostly internal and the share of external debts is low. Hence the likelihood of debt risk is also small. Our monetary policy is prudent, ensuring reasonably sufficient liquidity. And the commercial banks have high capital adequacy ratio and provision coverage ratio. Their non-performing assets ratio, despite some increase, is far below the world's average. They have strong ability of risk compensation and loss absorption. Going forward, we will gradually bring down non-financial corporate leverage ratio and address hidden risks by developing multi-tiered capital markets, raising the share of direct financing and promoting corporate mergers and restructuring.

Talking about the property market, China's new type of urbanization will be a long process. Given the trend of divergence in the housing market, we will urge local governments to shoulder their responsibilities and adopt city-specific policies to meet people's basic housing needs and take effective measures that suit national and local conditions, endeavor to provide housing to all in need and ensure steady and sound development of the real estate market. We are confident that we will be able to meet the major economic and social development targets this year, forestall systemic and regional financial risks, and lay a solid foundation for stable development next year.