CARY HUANG in Beijing

The mainland will enhance macroeconomic controls on fixed-asset investment, speed up economic restructuring and stimulate consumption next year, the Politburo of the ruling Communist Party said after a meeting yesterday.

The meeting, chaired by party chief President Hu Jintao , was clearly aimed at setting the tone for the annual national economic work conference, which is expected to be held next week.

The conference, which is closely watched by business managers and economists, will lay down parameters for next year's overall economic plan, the annual budget and a government work report to be tabled by Premier Wen Jiabao to the annual session of the National People's Congress in March.

Mr Hu also gave a speech in which he reviewed the economic progress made over the past year.

Mr Hu said that as next year was the first of the 11th Five-Year Programme (2006-2010), it was important to make a new beginning.

He said the government should maintain the continuity and stability of macroeconomic control policies next year, meaning that the mainland leadership was most likely to pursue its existing stable fiscal and financial policies.

According to the Politburo's statement, the government would focus on promoting agricultural development, speeding up economic restructuring, stimulating private consumption, strengthening macroeconomic controls on fixed-asset investment, boosting the quality and level of opening up, and deepening institutional reforms.

It urged officials to be alert and tackle the problems that ordinary people felt strongly about: job creation, improving the social security system, reducing poverty, promoting production safety and strengthening the enforcement of law and social order.

"Efforts must be made to boost social harmony and maintain stability," Xinhua reported yesterday, citing the statement.

In a separate meeting, Mr Hu tried to elaborate by stressing that breakthroughs must be made in reforming government administration, state-owned enterprises and the financial and fiscal systems.

In another significant development, the Politburo yesterday endorsed a general plan calling for faster reform and development of the mainland's cultural industry.

It said that after two years of experimentation, there was a serious need to push ahead with the reforms, but did not provide details.

The cultural industry is an official mainland catch-all phrase which covers not only the performing arts and book publishing but also the sensitive media sector.

Mainland officials are understood to have stepped up efforts to partly open the media sector to investment, mainly in the areas of programme production and the distribution of publications.

But officials have made it clear that Beijing would discourage foreign investment and control over the newsrooms of mainland media.