A few hours after the monthly flood of figures showed China’s strong economic growth remained on track, the country’s central bank seems to have signalled that a change in monetary policy might be on the cards.

The flood of economic figures showed house prices, industrial production, power consumption, urban investment and retail sales all stronger during the month; inflation isn’t a problem, even though deflation is easing.

Exports fell, but were still better than forecast. It was good news for Australia and China remains on track to see annual growth rate of 10% this quarter.

But then the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) issued its quarterly monetary policy statement a few hours after these figures were released.

A report on the China Daily website suggests the central bank is starting to change its focus from exclusively focusing on a “loose” monetary policy to one where it will step up efforts to balance inflation perception and economic growth as well as continuing to implement the relatively easy monetary policy.

“We will make the policy more flexible and sustainable and keep policy abreast with economic climate and price changes,” the People’s Bank said in the latest quarterly report of monetary policy on Wednesday.

“As the economy is on the road to recovery with easy credit, we will closely watch the price changes and keep them stable in the long-run,” it said.

Chinese banks lent a record 8.92 trillion Yuan ($1.31 trillion) in the first 10 months, far exceeding the five trillion Yuan annual target, to fuel the economic recovery.

Credit expansion actually fell a year-low in October as the new Yuan loans shrank to 253 billion Yuan ($37.06 billion) half the 516.7 billion Yuan lent in September.

There are reports the five trillion loan figure for 2009 will be lifted by 20% or so next year (to about six trillion. Seeing actual lending this year will top out above nine trillion Yuan, a figure about six trillion would represent a real decline of a third.

That in itself would represent a significant monetary policy tightening. This could be a real possibly seeing the central bank noted it will keep the credit growth at a “reasonable” pace and make it “sustainable and balanced”.

The comments by the PBOC are only a hint of a possible policy change: the State Council and its associated groups would have to issue similar comments for it to become firm government policy, but it is a sign that some of China’s most senior econocrats are starting to think in terms of normal economic management, rather than solely stimulating the economy. Much like our Reserve Bank has changed its tack in the past three months.

And, with President Obama visiting next week, the PBOC also mentioned currency values in its statement.

The bank said foreign exchange policy would take into account “capital flows and major currency movements”, a surprisingly pointed reference to the large speculative inflows of capital that China is receiving and the recent weakness of the US dollar.

This could be the usual Chinese government ploy of seeming to raise the importance of an issue ahead of the visit of an important foreigner to whom the issue (the value of the Chinese and US currencies) is of some interest.

China has not let its currency appreciate now for more than  a year and has used it to help its exports sell into the depressed global markets, especially in Asia. That has upset South Korea, Taiwan and Japanese companies competing with Chinese rivals in Asian markets, including their own. Other Asian currencies have firmed sharply, so China has effectively devalued its currency, without risking the international criticism of actually changing the value for what is still essentially a fixed exchange rate.

Any move by the PBOC to move to a more normalised monetary policy and away from the exclusively loose approach will be good news for Australia as it will signal that China is now convinced its economy has enough growth momentum of its own, not just from the huge stimulus package.

Industrial production rose 16.1% from October 2008, the best in a year (and up about 15.9% in September).

But there were a couple of blips: China’s imports of iron ore in October slumped 30% from September’s record.

Steel production rose to 51.75 million tonnes last month from the 50.71 million tonnes in September. That was up 42% on depressed October of last year (and up 2% from September’s 50.7 million tonnes). Copper imports fell 34% to their second lowest level this year.

And the most worrying figure was urban house prices, up 3.9% in the year to October. That doesn’t sound much, but prices were up 2.8% in the year to September, so prices have had their biggest rise in October for more than a year. Not a bubble yet, but certainly some fizz. Car sales were also again stronger in October, though under a million for the first time in six months.