Video: China's Vice Finance Minister Says Government 'Must Take Action' to Control Market Panic

Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao and ASPI President Kevin Rudd discuss China’s stock market and economic reform on CNN International.

Vice Finance Minister of China Zhu Guangyao said Friday that the Chinese government’s recent interventions in the stock market had been designed to lessen “panic” and sustain confidence among investors.

The interventions, Zhu said, had been “targeted,” “timely,” and “temporary.” Zhu offered his comments during an interview with Asia Society Policy Institute President Kevin Rudd on CNN International’s Amanpour, which Rudd guest-hosted on August 28.

“In [periods of] very big volatility, we must take action beyond just market behavior,” Zhu said. “After the market stabilized, [we let] the markets play the fundamental role” in setting prices.

“We really believe in … time, the market will be back to the normal track,” Zhu added.

Zhu said he expected China’s economy to grow at “about 7 percent” during 2015, after more than 30 years during which annual growth averaged nearly 10 percent.

China’s economic policy makers, Zhu said, “particularly emphasize innovation” in the country’s evolving economic model. “We do believe this … represents the future of Chinese economic development with high quality.”

Zhu also reiterated the government’s position that the renminbi should be added to the basket of reserve currencies that the International Monetary Fund uses to value Special Drawing Rights, which are potential claims on the currencies of IMF members.

In the second segment of Amanpour, Rudd discussed the effects of climate change with Lord Nicholas Stern, chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, and international climate policy with Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Noting that projected levels of greenhouse gas emissions would cause average temperatures to rise by three-and-a-half to four degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, Lord Stern said “that is very dangerous territory” that the planet hasn’t seen “for around three million years,” since the end of the last Ice Age.

“These kinds of temperature increases are just enormous and would rewrite where we could live, where the rivers are, where the seashores are, what the weather is like,” said Lord Stern.

The poorest areas of the world would be “hit strongest and earliest,” he added. “Probably most of Southern Europe would look like the Sahara Desert.”

Figueres said that countries’ national climate change plans, which governments have been announcing ahead of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris this December, will fall short of “where we should be, according to science, to be on the two degree [temperature increase] pathway.”

The resulting gap “will not be filled in Paris,” Figueres said. “It will not be filled in January.”

She noted that the Paris climate agreement “is being constructed, actually, as a progressive effort over a certain period of timeframes, during which countries need, and will be able to, because of increased technology and further capital flows … increase their contribution to the solution.”

Video: Kevin Rudd discusses climate change with Lord Nicholas Stern and Christiana Figueres on CNN International’s Amanpour.