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China’s Premier Li Keqiang. (Bloomberg) |
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that the nation will avoid a hard landing, while limiting the scale of any stimulus to support economic growth.
“The Chinese government is adjusting its economic operations to ensure the minimum growth rate is 7.5 percent, the level to ensure job creation,” Li said in a speech at Mansion House in London Wednesday. Inflation won’t exceed 3.5 percent, he added, without specifying a time period for the prediction.
China will have “medium to high-level” growth in the long run and will rely on “smart and targeted regulation” rather than strong stimulus measures, Li said.
“I can promise everyone honestly and solemnly, there won’t be a hard landing,” the premier said.
A property-market slowdown is adding to the risk that the nation will miss a 2014 target of an expansion of about 7.5 percent. China’s new-home prices fell in May in 35 of 70 cities tracked by the government, a statistics bureau report showed Wednesday. In the financial center of Shanghai, prices decreased 0.3 percent from April.
“Property remains the biggest macro risk in the near term,” Zhu Haibin, Hong Kong-based chief China economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. The real-estate industry accounted for about a fifth of China’s gross domestic product and further softening will bring additional downside risks to the economic outlook, Zhu said. (Bloomberg)
