China puts focus on consumers to drive growth

BEIJING (Reuters) - China put its fast-growing consumer class at centre-stage as outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao set out a reform plan on Tuesday to spread the fruits of economic growth more evenly in the country of 1.3 billion. Wen said unleashing the power of China's consumers was vital to the future of the world's second biggest economy and called for accelerated reform of the rigid hukou household registration system to drive an urbanisation effort that he said underpinned the country's programme of economic development Reported by Firstpost 6 hours ago.