CHINA’S ECONOMY IN 2012 AND 2013

CHINA ECONOMY TO REBOUND IN 2013: AFP SURVEY

Kelly Olsen (AFP)

The China Post, January 14, 2013

BEIJING -- China's economy is poised finally to end a long downward trend in 2013, economists polled by AFP say, as the new communist leadership vows to retool the nation's investment-led development model and promote a “happy life” for all.

The world's second-largest economy is not expected to return to double-digit growth, but the economists' predictions are a welcome spot of good news in a financial world assailed by the eurozone debt crisis and lackluster recovery in the United States.

After seven consecutive quarters of slowing growth, China's gross domestic product (GDP) will rise by 8 percent in 2013, according to the median forecast of 15 economists surveyed by AFP. The poll also projected 7.7-percent growth for 2012.

The figures would outpace the government's 7.5-percent growth target for 2012 — but are well below the 9.3 percent recorded in 2011 and 10.4 percent in 2010.

Maintaining growth is all-important for China's communist leaders, who derive much of their claims to legitimacy from the country's reform-led economic rise, which has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past three decades.

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