It’s all relative. To any developed nation, a GDP growth of just over 7% would look absolutely marvellous!
“China’s state media have long accused foreign analysts of being too bearish on the Chinese economy. Those analysts looking in from the outside are often said to be too eager to be “chanting decline”—chang shuai—when it comes to the economy’s prospects.
This time around, China’s own economists seem to be chanting a pessimistic tune about growth prospects. Perhaps they are not quite as negative as those pesky foreign counterparts—who according to at least one report China’s state media are being told to avoid—but they are increasingly outspoken about slowing growth and rising financial risk.
“We are now in a painful stage,” economist Wang Luolin told a seminar this week. “Let’s not try to dress things up,” said the consultant to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.
Yu Bin, a senior researcher at the influential Development Research Center under the State Council, took a similarly pessimistic view.
“The fact is, China’s economic growth is facing substantial downward pressure,” he said. “I don’t think we should get our hopes up for this year’s growth.”
China’s growth has been slowing amid a recovering global economy coupled with weak domestic demand. The days of double-digit expansion are long gone. Economic growth slipped to 7.7% in the fourth quarter of last year from 7.8% in the third – and many economists see a further slackening ahead.
“We expect the economic growth rate to be just above 7% this year, and that’s about it,” Mr. Yu said. That would be well below the 7.7% expansion in all of 2013.
Mr. Yu added that all three big drivers of China’s growth — investment, consumption and exports— are looking weak.”
via Even China’s Economists Are Singing the Blues – China Real Time Report – WSJ.
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