BIZCHINA / Top Biz News

New economic growth mode is good news
(People's Daily Online)
Updated: 2006-06-15 13:57

Stephen Roach, chief economist of Morgan Stanley, said in his latest economic review that although China is more influential than any other economy in the world in terms of pushing up global demand for bulk commodities, the new policy made by the Chinese leadership indicates a major shift of the country's growth model --- from high-resources consumption manner to low-resources consumption. He believes this strategy would not only facilitate China's sustainable development, but also well serve the global economy.

Statistics show astonishing proportion of China's contribution to the increase in world's industrial material consumption. Among which, consumption of aluminum increased by 50%, iron ore by 84%, steel by 108%, cement 115%, zinc 120%, and copper and nickel even by triple. China has become the largest consumer of copper, nickel and zinc. Apparently the Chinese economy is mainly based on bulk commodities consuming industrial production and driven by fixed investment and export.

When many think this trend will go on limitless, the Chinese leaders have wisely made the new growth guideline. Stephen Roach expects that the new strategy would bring significant effect to China's economic growth features, and even influence the financial market and global economy.

Stephen Roach also interpreted the newly promulgated 11th Five-year Plan, and found that China would focus more on boosting its domestic consumption and reduce its reliance on investment and export.

In his forecast, in the future 5 years, China will maintain annual GDP growth of 7.5% and reduce its resource consumption by 20% per GDP by 2010.

He regards all of this as an implication that the process of China's economic re-balancing has begun.


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