Li Keqiang stresses market reforms at first press conference as premier

China still has "a lot to gain" from deepening market-oriented reforms, newly elected premier Li Keqiang said yesterday in his first news conference as helmsman of the world's second-largest economy.

Li, the first Chinese premier with a doctorate in economics, also said the government should lower the entry barriers for private capital to enter the finance, railway and energy sectors, urging that administrative powers be cut to allow markets to play a bigger role.

"I have often said that reform pays the biggest dividend for China," Li said. "This is because there is still room for improvement in our socialist market economy. There is great space for the further unleashing of productivity through reform and there is great potential for making sure the benefits of reform will reach the entire population."

The key to gaining bigger dividends from reform, he suggested, was to combine the potential of domestic demand and the vitality of creativity to form the new drivers of economic growth.

"We need to enhance the quality and efficiency of economic growth, raise employment rates and people's income and enhance environmental protection and the saving of resources so that we will fully upgrade the Chinese economy," he said.

Li outlined three priorities for his cabinet: transformation of the economic model; improving people's livelihoods; and enhancing social justice.

He promised to make full use of "fiscal, financing, pricing and other policy instruments" and to "pursue reform of the budgetary system" to make the Chinese economy more open, transparent, standardised and inclusive.