This article argues that low growth would be a good symptom as China shifts to a consumption based economy. GDP must drop 1-2 points each year for around 5 years, as part of a mechanism to transfer wealth from producers to households. The resulting 3-4% GDP growth does not mean a "hard landing" and may not lead to unemployment if they can kick start consumption. Whether this can be done or not depends on politics against vested interests, and will be determined over the next 2 years.
Michael Pettis, Sep 2014:
What does a good Chinese adjustment look like?
http://blog.mpettis.com/2014/09/what-doe...look-like/
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It is a long article, snippets are below.
"China will either choose a “long landing”, in which growth rates drop sharply but in a controlled way such that unemployment remains reasonable even as GDP growth drops to 3% or less, or it will choose what analysts will at first hail as a soft landing – a few years of continued growth of 6-7% – followed by a collapse in growth and soaring unemployment."
"It seems pretty clear to me that the great distortions in the Chinese economy that led both to rapid but unhealthy growth and to the consumption imbalance (by forcing down the household income share of GDP) are gradually being squeezed out of the system....If China can reform land ownership, reform the hukou system, enforce a fairer and more predictable legal system on businesses, reduce rent-capturing by oligopolistic elites, reform the financial system (both liberalizing interest rates and improving the allocation of capital), and even privatize assets, 3-4% GDP growth can be accompanied by growth in household income of 5-7%. "
"...the idea that slower GDP growth will cause social disturbance or even chaos because of angry, unemployed mobs is not true."
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I wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up.
Jim Rogers