China's annual GDP growth slowed to its weakest rate in more than two decades in 2014, according to an AFP survey, projecting further deceleration in the world's second-largest economy this year.
The median forecast in a poll of 15 economists saw the Asian giant's gross domestic product (GDP) expanding 7.3 per cent last year, down from 7.7 per cent in 2013.
That would be the worst full-year result since the 3.8 per cent recorded in 1990 - the year after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) releases the official GDP figures for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2014 on Tuesday.
For this year, the economists see growth slowing further to a median 7.0 per cent, as Chinese leaders proclaim a "new normal" of slower expansion and emphasise economic reforms.
"China may introduce many restructuring and reform measures this year and this may have some negative impact on economic growth," ANZ economist Liu Li-Gang told AFP.
He said that they might include changes to state-owned enterprises, financial reforms such as interest rate liberalisation and looser restrictions on private banks.
China, a main driver of global growth, was beset last year by problems ranging from weakness in manufacturing and trade to financial worries over rising debt levels and falling real estate prices, which have sent shock waves through the key property sector.
For October to December 2014, the survey saw GDP as having risen a median 7.2 per cent year-on-year.
That would be marginally weaker than the third quarter's 7.3 per cent, and the worst quarterly result since the first three months of 2009, when growth logged a 6.6 per cent expansion during the global financial crisis.
Authorities appeared to take last year's performance largely in their stride, sticking to a scenario whereby the country's consumers take the lead in underpinning expansion in coming years, emphasising in public statements the quality of growth rather than its size.
"China has entered a new normal of economic growth," Li Baodong, a vice foreign minister, told reporters on Friday, repeating a newly favoured phrase of the country's leaders.
"That is to say we are going through structural adjustment and the structural adjustment is progressing steadily."
Purveyors of high-quality consumer goods such as neighbours Japan and South Korea, as well as Europe and the United States, could stand to benefit from the remodelling of the economy.
But the implications of slowing Chinese growth for the rest of the world are already visible.
Commodity exporters such as Australia have suffered, after profiting immensely from China's boom years when expansion averaged 10 per cent, hitting 14.2 per cent as recently as 2007.
Share
