Key terms for China’s economy
“GOOD trend”, “strong focus” and “huge potential” are three terms mentioned over and over again by experts at home and abroad to describe China’s economy during the 2016 China Development Forum, held in Beijing in March.
If the Chinese economy is compared to a giant airliner in the sky, its transitional pains are like airflow, which may cause turbulence but does not change the direction of the plane.
The latest data shows that in first two months of this year, total retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.2%.
During the same period, national online retail sales grew 25.4% and food and beverage revenue increased by 11.3%.
Over the past five years, China has had an average annual economic growth of 7.8%. Compared to Japan and South Korea, China’s slowdown is much milder than those of the other two countries, according to Wang Yiming, Deputy Director of the Development Research Centre of the State Council of the PRC.
In Wang’s opinion, China’s economic transformation was launched in the past five years, which is evidenced in the contributions that growing consumption has made to economic growth, the service industry, urbanisation and other indicators.
Compared to many other countries, China’s current economic growth rate is still high, said Eric Maskin, Nobel laureate and professor at Harvard University. Maskin said that in the next five to 10 years, China’s economy will emulate European and other developed countries’ economies.
Finance Minister Lou Jiwei has shrugged off the pessimistic outlook on China’s sovereign credit rating by US ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service in April.
There have been no major negative responses from either the international or domestic market to China’s shifting economic landscape. Not only did the offshore RMB exchange rate not fall, it actually rose, Lou told the China Development Forum in Beijing recently.
Not all international organisations think the way Moody’s does. Just before the forum began, Christine Lagarde, MD of the IMF, said that China’s growth transition and reforms are a necessary process that “in the long run will lead to more sustainable growth and benefit both China and the world”.
Sharing the view that China’s economy will not experience a “hard landing”, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman said that China’s 6.9% economic growth rate last year is still a very good rate in the context of the global economic environment. Schwarzman expects China’s service industry to grow significantly in proportion to the country’s economy in the next five to 10 years. Meanwhile, he believes the Chinese economy will be more dependent on the domestic market.
There have been no major negative responses from markets to China’s shifting economic landscape The latest data shows that in first two months of this year, total retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.2%