More profound than the foreign threat, according to Sheng Hong, a reformist economist at the Unirule Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, would be the opening of Chinese banking to domestic competition, through interest-rate liberalisation.

ECONOMIST: Problems left over from history | The

Wednesday, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the H7N9 virus probably came from migratory birds from East Asia that mixed with domestic fowl in China's Yangtze River delta region around Shanghai.

CNN: WHO reports 5 new bird flu cases in China; total now 49