China’s economic slowdown — Communist party and government officials insist both in public and in private — is all going according to plan.
From 6.8 per cent annual growth in 2017 to 6.6 per cent last year and an expected target range of 6-6.5 per cent next year, slower but “higher quality” growth that leaves, for example, a cleaner environment in its wake is indeed a good thing.
There is, these officials argue, also comfort to be taken from the ever greater “quantum” of growth that China’s economy throws off every year. A bigger but slower growing economy creates more additional demand than a smaller economy that is expanding more rapidly.