With ambitious stimulus measures, impressive GDP growth and policy coordination, China has played a prominent role in fighting the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund's Deputy Managing Director Takatoshi Kato says.

China's role

Kato was in Beijing for the Third International Tax Dialogue (ITD) Global Conference which opened on Monday. In an exclusive interview with Xinhua before the meeting, he praised China's effective stimulus measures and hoped that China could maintain reform initiatives to make more success.

"China has adopted a very ambitious stimulus package a little bit ahead of other G20 countries last November," Kato said, talking about China's efforts in fighting the crisis. In that way, China set "a good precedent" for other countries to follow suit in terms of the extent and content of the package, he said.

"In that sense, the IMF commends very much the very ambitious undertaking on the part of the Chinese authorities," stressed Kato.

In the third quarter China's GDP growth rose to 8.9 percent. According to Kato, the figure is encouraging in the sense that "strong growth was supported by strong investment and robust consumption."

"I hope this trend will be maintained in 2010," he said.

Kato pointed out that the Chinese authorities have encouraged more private consumption compared to investment and exports. "Several of their policy actions are certainly contributing in this direction, such as more significant budget appropriations for the social safety net and so on."

Kato said the IMF recognized that China has made progress in reforming foreign exchange rate management and other market infrastructure like further development of the stock market. "I hope these reform initiatives will continue further in the months ahead," he said.