China's Zhou warns on growth slowdown

Beijing

CHINA'S central bank chief said that the nation's growth rate has tumbled "a bit" too much and that policy makers have scope to respond, underscoring forecasts for further monetary easing in the world's second-largest economy.

"China's inflation is also declining, so we need to be vigilant to see if the disinflation trend will continue, and if deflation will happen or not," People's Bank of China (PBOC) governor Zhou Xiaochuan, 67, said in remarks at the Boao Forum for Asia, an annual conference on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.