China manages to keep economic growth dynamics: Russian expert

MOSCOW - China has managed to keep the expected overall dynamics of economic growth in the first nine months of this year, a Russian economist said Wednesday.

In an interview with Xinhua, Alexey Maslov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, one of Russia's top universities, said China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the first nine months "showed the rate in accordance with the planned guidelines."

China's GDP expanded 6.7 percent year-on-year between January-September 2016 to nearly 53 trillion yuan ($7.87 trillion), according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China earlier on Wednesday.

The latest figure, which is within China's annual growth target range of 6.5 to 7 percent, is less impressive compared with the double-digit growth China's economy achieved in the first decade of the 21st century.

Maslov sees the slowdown as the result of the country trying to diversify its growth impetus.

China's rapid growth has long come from public investment in fixed assets, while a significant part of the production did not give a direct return to the market, Maslov said.

Therefore, although the growth rate figures looked well, the real money turnover was less impressive, he added. Over a year ago China set itself the task of developing the consumer market share in the country's GDP and did a good job, which is evidenced by the over-ten-percent retail sales jump in the first nine months this year, the expert said.

Maslov said that the achieved results overturned the fears of some foreign observers who held a bearish view about China's economic prospects.

Meanwhile, Maslov also said that China's economy should not only be evaluated by its GDP figures.

"There are two factors that can guarantee the stability of the Chinese economy -- the increase of investment abroad and the reactivation of the consumer market, both of which have worked well so far," he said.

Besides, the fight against corruption is bringing positive results.

In the past two years China managed to "break the backbone" of a number of regional financial clans, whose interests were largely inconsistent with the main directions of the country's economic development, he said.

Maslov also warned about the growing imbalances in the Chinese economy, with one third of provinces heavily subsidized and rich coastal provinces contributing disproportionately large amounts to the GDP growth.

But on the whole Maslov is optimistic about China's economic prospects. China, to its credit, is now groping for the base, which will allow it to contain the slowdown of its economy and make a smooth landing, he said.