From Fridays business section of the Australian newspaper.
CHINA'S 4 trillion yuan ($808 billion) stimulus package is starting to produce results, with industrial output rising quickly, backing recent news of stronger retail sales.
Last month, China's industrial output growth jumped 8.3 per cent, up from the 3.8 per cent rise of the first two months, as domestic demand continued to improve, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said.
He described the figures as "better than expected", according to an interview published in the China Securities Journal.
But he warned that the international financial crisis "has not yet hit the bottom".
Financial analysts in China, however, are increasingly confident that the country's slowing economy has bottomed.
"We believe the trough of sequential growth is already behind us, and China is heading into the initial stage of a recovery in the first quarter of 2009," said Goldman Sachs Guo Hua analysts Helen Qiao and Yu Song. "In our view, China has already come out of the long winter featuring the sharpest and most severe growth slowdown in the past 30 years.
"Green shoots of strong domestic credit expansion, together with higher-than-expected fixed asset investment (FAI) growth are signalling the arrival of a spring season with rising upside risks to domestic demand growth."
But Mr Wen warned that the outlook for China's exports -- which together with flow-on effects account for about 30 per cent of its GDP -- was still uncertain with plummeting demand for its products from offshore showing few signs of reversing. This in turn is pushing up unemployment in China, which will have its own economic problems.
"It's hard to say that China alone has steered away from the crisis," Mr Wen said.
In November, China announced its unprecedented stimulus package, which it fast-tracked to counter the global financial crisis.
The country moved more swiftly and on a greater scale than any Western country.
But China's relatively strong economy is beginning to worry other nations, with South Korea voicing concerns yesterday about its neighbour's rising economic power and potential threat to take some of its export markets.
China's National Statistics Bureau is scheduled to release first-quarter data on the Chinese economy on Thursday.
"While the market will likely focus on the lower year-on-year growth readings in the upcoming first quarter of 2009 GDP and March growth data, we reiterate our view that the sequential acceleration in activity growth is more important," Ms Qiao and Ms Yi said. "The growth rebound in 1Q 2009 looks strong, especially compared to elsewhere in the world, but hurdles remain high for GDP growth to reach close to the Government's target of 8 per cent this year."