China's economy, the world's fourth largest, probably grew more than 10 percent for the fifth straight quarter on booming exports and an investment rebound.

Gross domestic product expanded 10.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the median estimate of 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, the same pace as in the fourth quarter. The statistics bureau will release first-quarter figures in Beijing on April 19.

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China's foreign-exchange reserves grow by US$1 million a minute, flooding the economy with cash and fueling investment and inflation. US complaints to the World Trade Organization last week and lawmakers' claims the yuan is kept weak to make exports cheap have stoked trade tensions.

"Relations with America, and increasingly Europe, are on the edge of major upheaval," said Donald Straszheim, vice chairman of Roth Capital Partners LLC in Newport Beach, California. "Growth would not run nearly as fast except for the essentially pegged currency."

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson last week called in Washington for China to allow the yuan to strengthen, while finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven industrial nations said the currency should move.

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