China reported on Tuesday that its economic growth fell to a five-year low. But one forecaster says that’s just the beginning. This week the Conference Board issued a 75-page white paper predicting that China’s annual growth will dip below 4 percent in the next decade. Its title: The Long Soft Fall in Chinese Growth.
I met on Monday with the report’s authors, David Hoffman and Andrew Polk, and asked why they’re so pessimistic on China. They said it’s a straightforward projection of recent slowdowns in the growth of capital investment, labor productivity, and the quantity and quality of the labor force.
It’s the optimists who need to defend their case, according to Hoffman, because the only way to project continued 7 percent growth for China is to project major output-enhancing economic reforms. “We just don’t think that will happen,” says Hoffman, who manages the Conference Board China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing.
via China GDP Growth of Just 4 percent is possible – Businessweek.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 