China Trims Growth Target

It must never be forgotten that China is the world’s last remaining communist super-power. At the heart of the communist philosophy is the belief that ultimately, the people are in a struggle with capitalism which must be overthrown to establish a communist panacea across the world. The “experiment” that China is engaging with via its “flirtation” with capitalism must sit uncomfortably in a one party state with a regulated economy – ultimately, one thing or the other must give.

The world’s second largest economy, China, has eased its growth target for 2017 by 0.5% and is now calling for growth of “just” 6.5%. Since adopting the experiment with running a capitalist economy in parallel with a communist state, the nation has seen phenomenal growth. Last year’s disappointing growth figure of 6.7% was the weakest performance for 26 years (including the years at the height of the Global Financial Crisis). Some economists take Chinese growth data with a healthy dose of salt, of course.

Speaking to the National People’s Congress (parliament) Premier Li Keqiang pledged to tackle state “zombie enterprises” which were producing more coal and steel than the market required. This, if carried through, would please the global community since China has frequently been accused of dumping goods (such as iron and steel) on world markets at artificially low costs. He also said that more would be done to tackle pollution caused by China’s heavy industry: “We will make our skies blue again. All sources of industrial pollution will be placed under round-the-clock online monitoring”.

In his speech, he identified atmospheric pollution, or smog, as a difficulty facing the nation and criticised the “laziness” of some government officials. Given current concerns in Western Europe over the failure of some EU states to routinely meet atmospheric pollution standards have triggered alarmist warnings of potentially millions of excess deaths linked to poor air quality, a fact finding mission to China and access to relevant mortality and morbidity statistics would be most revealing.