China’s leaders have warned their people they need to accommodate a “new normal” of economic growth far slower than the rate that propelled the economy into the world’s second-largest in the past two decades. As WSJ’s James T. Areddy and Lingling Wei report:
Now, the rest of the world also needs to get used to the new normal: a China in the midst of a tectonic shift in its giant economy that is rattling markets world-wide.
The slowdown deepening this year is part of a bumpy transition away from an era when smokestack industries, huge exports and massive infrastructure spending—underpinned by trillions in state-backed debt—powered China’s seemingly unstoppable rise. Today, debt has swelled to more than twice the size of the economy, and some of those industries, such as construction and steel, are reeling.
Instead of them, China is pushing services, consumer spending and private entrepreneurship as new drivers of growth that rely less on debt and more on the stock market for funding.
via The World Struggles to Adjust to China’s ‘New Normal’ – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 