'Cutting debt does not mean cutting growth'

Tuo Zhen, spokesman for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, said on Tuesday that reducing debt and stabilizing economic growth are not contradictory policies.

"In the long run, deleveraging will help remove hidden risks that will affect steady and healthy economic development and strengthen medium- and long-term economic resilience," Tuo said.

China has created a good and steady macroeconomic environment for deleveraging and economic growth by holding onto the fundamental principle of making progress while maintaining stability, continuing to implement active fiscal policy and prudential monetary policy, sticking to supply-side structural reforms and moderately expanding total demands, he said.

"We insisted on taking multiple measures to deleverage to ensure that deleveraging will not make a negative impact on economic growth," Tuo said.

"At the current stage, deleveraging has made initial progress without bringing obvious austerity effects on the economy," he added.