Thursday, May 30, 2024

China's growth outlook: IMF's upward revision

It looks as though the doomsayers who forecast China's gdp growth slowing to 3 per cent are being proved wrong. The IMF has raised its forecast forecast  for China's growth upwards frm 4.5 to 5 per cent for 2024. For 2025, it projects growth of 4.5 per cent. Those are very impressive numbers for an economy of China's size. 

The IMF frowns on China's industrial policy, including the targeting of sectors such as automobiles and chip-making. That is silly- China is not alone in practising industrial policy and the IMF should be criticising the US for its own industrial policies.

The Western media has been feeding negative information about China's growth for years.We have been warned varioiusly of a credit bubble, a real estate bubble and a tech bubble that would disrupt Chinese growth. 

No such disruption has happened. What we see is a deceleration. Partly the deceleration is a function of the sheer size of China's economy. Partly, it is policy-induced. China's policy makers are woried about the pattern of growth, especially the way growth has happened at the cost of macroeconomic stability and inequality. It wants to correct the pattern - and it prepared to sacrifice growth for those reasons. The "crisis" in the Chinese economy is a figment of Western imagination. 

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