Academic sees positive signs in reforms

Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution based in Washington, hopes for strong measures to push forward China's economic and financial reforms during the annual session of the National People's Congress in Beijing.

An expert on China's economy, Prasad said he has seen positive signs in the country's economic transition and reforms in recent years. "Over the past year or so while the economy has done quite well, the overall credit growth, no matter how you measure it, has been coming down. This is a positive thing for the financial system," he said.

Prasad also noted significant actions taken in past years such as interest rate liberalization, the institution of an explicit deposit insurance system, efforts to more effectively enforce banking regulations and the move by the People's Bank of China, the central bank, to try to increase the impact of price signals on monetary policy.