China's top priority is stabilizing prices and the government doesn't plan to alter the direction of economic policies, Premier Wen Jiabao said.

The slowdown in the economy is "reasonable" and within government expectations, Wen wrote in an article in the ruling Communist Party's Qiushi magazine. An abstract was posted on the government's website yesterday.

Banks including UBS AG, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank AG cut their growth forecasts for China last month as a slowdown in the U.S. economy and Europe's debt crisis threaten the nation's exports.

"The government is worried that even if inflation pressures are easing now, if they relax too much or let people think they are relaxing, inflation and expectations could rise again," said Mark Williams, a London-based Asia economist at Capital Economics Ltd. "Growth is stabilizing rather than dropping sharply."

The government needs to balance maintaining relatively fast growth, restructuring of the economy and managing inflation expectations, Wen wrote. "We need to bring down the pace of price increases without causing large fluctuations in the economic growth rate."