China has voiced support for increasing the financial resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to enable the institution to assist cash-starved developing countries in overcoming the crisis.

In addition, China remains a staunch supporter of free trade and investment at a time when an increasing number of countries have been tempted to resort to protectionist measures to cushion the negative impact of the crisis.

Setting up more trade and investment barriers cannot rescue the world economy. On the contrary, it runs the very risk of exacerbating world economic problems by destabilizing the multilateral trade framework which has been instrumental in ensuring steady economic growth in the years prior to the current crisis.

As the crisis roils major financial markets and threatens to derail global economic growth, China has engaged in the debate on reforming the international monetary system in efforts to minimize the chance that such crises would come back to haunt the world economy.

Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of China's central bank, has recently joined the discussion about rebuilding the global monetary system by proposing to create a super sovereign reserve currency.

Zhou, like some officials in Russia, believed that the ongoing financial crisis highlighted the vulnerabilities of the current global monetary system based on national reserve currencies.

On top of all that it has done, China will continue to play a constructive role in helping the world ride out the global crisis. A timely economic recovery is not only important to the global economy, but also key to China's own economic success.

(Xinhua News Agency April 2, 2009)