16.04.06 - China's annual economic growth quickened to 10.2 percent in the first quarter of 2006
China's annual economic growth quickened to 10.2 percent in the first quarter, a blistering pace that could increase pressure on President Hu Jintao to let the yuan rise faster.
The figure, which Hu disclosed on Sunday during a televised meeting with Lien Chan, a former chairman of Taiwan's main opposition Nationalist Party, marks a pick-up from the fourth quarter of 2005, when gross domestic product rose 9.9 percent from a year earlier.
China's GDP expanded on average by 10 percent a year in 2003-2005, making it the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world, but Hu said Beijing was not pursuing fast growth for its own sake.
Source BEIJING, April 16 (Reuters)
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