The government also set the 2011 economic growth forecast at the usual eight percent target, the China Securities Journal said, citing a Monday meeting of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planning agency.

The government had set the 2010 inflation target at three percent growth, but planners have said it will exceed that due to a poor harvest and a nationwide surge in liquidity over the past two years.

The consumer price index -- the key gauge of inflation -- rose 5.1 percent year-on-year in November, the fastest increase in more than two years, as food costs continued to soar.

Next year the government will likely make controlling prices a greater priority, the newspaper said.

It added that "rising prices are being driven by food costs and the likelihood of strong and widespread inflation is weak", the newspaper quoted Wang Yiming, vice president of the NDRC's Macro Economy Research Institute, as saying.

The NDRC also endorsed a set of anti-inflation guidelines for next year similar to those adopted by an annual economic conference of China's top leaders over the weekend, the report said.

They included "strengthening the development of agriculture and rural areas and farmers' incomes," which are well below those of urban residents.

The economic growth target has not changed for several years and has been exceeded each time.

That should be the case again in 2010 with economists predicting China's gross domestic product growth (GDP) should be around 10 percent.

China's GDP surpassed Japan's in the second quarter to make it the world's second largest economy after the United States.

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