China has plenty of opportunities for economic growth in 2016: expert
Posting Date:[2016-01-08]
China
still has a lot of opportunities for economic growth in the new year despite
weak outside demand, said former senior vice president and chief economist of
World Bank Justin Yifu Lin Thursday.
Lin made
the remarks in delivering a keynote speech at a meeting hosted by the National
Committee of U.S.-China Relations in New York Thursday, insisting tapping
domestic demand in China would be the key to creating the opportunities.
"China
is a transition economy, certainly China has a lot of structural internal
problems, however I think the deceleration since the beginning of 2010 is
mainly due to external and cyclical issues," said Lin.
"We
can see all other emerging market economies face similar deceleration since
first quarter of 2010, which are sharper than China," he added. "Even
some economies of high-income, high-performing countries like Singapore and
Korea are decelerating."
The
economist believed the external hurdles came as the high-income countries have
not fully recovered from the financial crisis of 2008 and reduced the imports.
China
still has good opportunities for growth from boosting domestic demand, said
Lin, who suggested that the nation further improve the infrastructure, invest
in environment production and continue the urbanization.
In the
meantime, China needs to raise the productivity so as to move from middle-income
to high-income country.
"Supply
side reform tries to improve the production sector of China in order to improve
the productivity. Secondly, China needs to digest those excess capacities so
resources can be relieved for the growth of other sectors," said Lin, who
believed the shift toward a services-based new model in China also helps to
lift the downside pressures in the old manufacturing-based model.
Lu Feng,
director of China Macroeconomic Research Center with the elite Peking
University, echoed Lin's remarks and said the expansion of the tertiary sector
has been the main factor contributing to the total growth of non-farming jobs
in China in recent years.
According
to him, total non-farming jobs in China increased by 62.9 million in 2010-2014
period, of which, the tertiary sector contributed 50.3 million jobs. Endit