China won't comment on whether it backs Lagarde for IMF chief

China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it had no direct comment on whether Beijing supports French finance minister Christine Lagarde to be the new head of the International Monetary Fund.

China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it had no direct comment on whether Beijing supports French finance minister Christine Lagarde to be the new head of the International Monetary Fund.

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"You can refer your questions about that to the relevant department," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing in Beijing. "The foreign ministry is not that agency, and authoritative information should come from the responsible agency."

French budget mMinister and government spokesman Francois Baroin said on Tuesday that China supports Lagarde to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who faces charges of sexual assault and resigned his position.

Lagarde is the front-runner for the job, but officials of emerging economies have pushed back against any assumption that the next IMF leader must automatically be European.

The IMF's future leadership should reflect the growing stature of emerging economies, China's central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said last week, but he stopped short of saying that the head of the group should be from an emerging economy.

China is the biggest of the fast-growing emerging economies that will gain more say at the IMF under an agreement reached in 2010 that reflects their growing economic power.