Rosy New Year wish of consumers

The big screen shows live data of gross merchandise volume of the 2015 Tmall Global Shopping Festival on Nov 11, 2015. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Some media outlets deem China's economic slowdown to be the top financial and economic news of 2015, as it hurt consumption worldwide. But Chinese consumers seem to differ.

Two figures may explain why.

One is that China's online retail sales are expected to outperform the rest of the world by reaching 4 trillion yuan ($618 billion) this year. The other is that about 120 million Chinese traveled overseas in 2015, making China the largest source of overseas tourists in the world.

For most of the past three decades, China was known for its trademark robust growth and the unbelievable diligence of its workers. Rapid economic development not only brought prosperity to China but also fueled continuous growth around the world. And Chinese workers shone prominently across the world, prompting even the Time magazine to name them the Person of the Year in 2009 when the world economy was still struggling with the worst global financial crisis in about seven decades.

However, as the Chinese economy braces for the slowest growth in a quarter century, a sense of disappointment has arisen among those who have long counted on China as a key driver of global growth.

Concerns over the health of the world's second-largest economy are justified. After the country's growth slowed to below 7 percent in the third quarter of 2015, the Chinese authorities sounded the alarm against the rising stock of unsold homes, the lingering overcapacity of many industrial sectors and the rapid pileup of companies' and local governments' debts.

Domestically, people are anxious to know whether measures to eliminate overcapacity and excessive debt will cost too many jobs and spook the financial market. Internationally, investors are worried about the downward pressure China's economic slowdown will create on commodity prices that have already plunged, causing financial difficulties for exporting countries.