Apart from tapping consumption potential, Kuijs suggested increasing the cost of industrial input such as land, energy and other natural resources to make the economy less intensive of energy and less detrimental to the environment.

Institutional reforms should also be carried out to break monopoly in service sector, give private firms more access to capital market and allow private investors play a bigger role, economists say.

About 99 percent of Chinese enterprises are of small or medium size, which are most helpful in job creation and economic restructuring and need more support than they receive now, said Tang.

The deepening economic reforms should be accompanied by institutional reforms in the political area, said Chi Fulin, a political advisor and executive director of the China (Hainan) Reform and Development Research Institute.

China last year carried out an institutional overhaul of the central government to establish "super ministries" concerning energy, transport, industry and environmental protection, aiming to streamline government department functions and strengthen macro-economic regulation.

Zhuang and Kuijs called for a greater reliance on market incentives and a regulatory system that encourage economic rebalancing, including more scientific performance evaluation of local officials.

China has said it's still open for more actions on top of the stimulus moves it's already committed to.

"The global financial crisis is still spreading and the bottom is yet to be seen," Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a press conference on Tuesday during the annual session of the National People's Congress, the top legislature. "Therefore China's macro-control as of today is still a comma, rather than a period."

(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2009)