On Sunday – in a hastily arranged web Q&A with Premier Wen Jiabao – China’s central government announced it will lower its growth target for the next 5 years - to a paltry 7 per cent a year.
While it may well be a statement of intent – Beijing wants growth to slow – it’s worth remembering how China’s growth in the last 5 years compared to the ‘target’ rate.
China’s previous 5 year plan in 2006 set a growth target for 7.5 per cent growth annually. And yet over that period – which included a global financial crisis – annual growth averaged 9.8 per cent. In 2010, the economy grew 10.3 per cent according to provisional figures (which tend to be revised up).