The days of 10% annual growth for the Chinese economy have ended, as was inevitable. But there is good reason to believe that the real story is not the slowdown, but the shift in Chinese output from quantity to quality.
BEIJING – There has always been a fixation on Chinese economic growth. And with good reason. For a large economy, sustaining annual growth rates of 10% over several decades is unprecedented. And yet that’s exactly what China did from 1980 to 2011. But now the miracle is over. Since 2012, annual growth has slowed to 7.2%, and Premier Li Keqiang’s recent annual “work report” set a growth target of just 6-6.5% for 2019.
BEIJING – There has always been a fixation on Chinese economic growth. And with good reason. For a large economy, sustaining annual growth rates of 10% over several decades is unprecedented. And yet that’s exactly what China did from 1980 to 2011. But now the miracle is over. Since 2012, annual growth has slowed to 7.2%, and Premier Li Keqiang’s recent annual “work report” set a growth target of just 6-6.5% for 2019.