From The Guardian:
Against the backdrop of a faltering global economy, turmoil in the country’s stock markets and overcapacity in factories, Chinese economic growth has slowed markedly. The country’s central bank expects growth in 2015 to be the slowest for a quarter of a century.
After growing 7.3% in 2014, the economy is thought to have expanded by 6.9% in 2015 and the central bank has forecast that it may slow further in 2016 to 6.8%.
A manufacturer who knows China well pointed out the fundamental fallacies in this to me. (Let's assume that the actual underlying figures and statistics are correct and not a figment of the Communist Party's imagination. They can fib about a couple of percent here or there, but you can't fake an economy quadrupling over ten or twenty years).
1. If an economy is growing, albeit more slowly, then it is still growing. It is not in any way "slowing"; growth of 6.9% is still double average annual compound growth of industrialised societies since the Industrial Revolution.
2. The Chinese economy has grown so quickly over the twenty years that 6.9% growth this year represents a larger absolute increase than 12.5% growth ten or fifteen years ago, to wit:
2000 - GDP per capita RMB 8,000, grows by RMB 1,000 to RMB 9,000 = 12.5% growth
2015 - GDP per capita RMB 45,000, grows by RMB 3,100 to RMB 48,100 = 6.9% growth.
So in absolute terms, the Chinese economy is growing three times as fast as it was fifteen years ago.
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