China Reality Check: Has the Hard Landing in China Already Started?

China’s economic growth rate fell to 7.4% in 2014, and many believe the official figure is actually more generous than the reality. Most forecasts expect growth to come in well under 7.0% in 2015. What are we to make of these trends? Are we at the beginning of a hard landing where the long history of structural inefficiencies are finally and inescapably being revealed and the possibilities of a financial crisis more ever looming? Or are we in a gradual shift toward a “new normal” of healthier and still relatively robust growth as a result of foresighted policy adjustments? Or is something else going on altogether? Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, is a veteran analyst of the China’s economy and economic policy process. She travels widely in China in order to compare official data with actual behavior and performance. Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal is a leading expert on macroeconomic policy and recently completed an extended posting in Beijing, where he wrote regularly about China’s economy.

Featuring:
Anne Stevenson-Yang
Co-founder and Research Director, J Capital Research