Looking at the Chinese economy now. China will maintain a prudent and neutral monetary policy while continuing to prevent systemic financial risks.

That was the word Wednesday from the People's Bank of China in its Fourth Quarter Monetary Policy Implementation Report. The PBOC report said that China has achieved some results in financial deleveraging, noting that the average lending rate for China's non-financial companies dropped from 5.76 percent in September, to 5.74 percent in December. However the report warned that China's corporate debt level remained relatively high, especially among SOEs. Still, the PBOC said that it would maintain appropriate credit growth and social financing to fuel the economy because balancing growth and deleveraging are top priorities. The PBOC also said it would keep liquidity and the value of the yuan reasonably stable. In addition, the central bank said that it would deepen interest rate and exchange rate reforms.