Chinese economy deserves unswerving confidence

BEIJING - As opinions of the international community split over prospects of China's capital market and its growth momentum lately, most observers with long-term perspective still recognize China as a robust engine for global economic growth.

Some Western speculators and newspaper columnists bewailed that the Chinese economy, disturbed by structural imbalance, high savings rates, "wasteful" investment and mounting debts, will face almost an inevitable "hard landing."

But those holding unswerving confidence in the aspiring prospect of China's economy in the long run have their own justifications. The Chinese economy, after decades of reform and opening up, has proved formidable enough to weather the current global deflationary trend and rein in financial fluctuant waves.

Firstly, the Chinese economy remains in a strong position to forestall the purported "hard landing." The second largest world economy, sitting on the colossal wealth of over $10 trillion, still makes the second-to-none contribution to the global economic growth despite its slowing GDP performance of 6.9 percent in 2015.

Also, China's remarkable domestic infrastructure and the country's uninterrupted export of construction expertise and programs to other countries, both developed and underdeveloped, have proved that China is credibly committed to and is capable of helping promote common development of the world economy.

China's ample well-educated workforce, the 38-percent high rate of abundant household savings in the country and the country's possession of the world's No 1 amount of foreign exchange reserve of over $3.33 trillion till the end of 2015 have also garnered investors' faith worldwide, enough to secure China's status as the top developing country in attracting foreign direct investment.

Secondly, the conspicuous imbalance in economic structure, frequently noted by pessimists and short-sighted analysts, can be turned into huge potential for future development. China's development strategies in recent years, from the domestic Go West plan to the broad Belt and Road Initiative (the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road), are all aimed at tapping the potential brought up by the economic disproportion and complementarity within China and far beyond.

More reassuringly, with a blossoming middle class in China, its blooming savings and the irreversible urbanization process, China has enjoyed a rising contribution in its economic growth from domestic consumption, which, according to statistics, has accounted for two thirds of the country's GDP increase.

Last but not the least, the confidence lies with the Chinese policy- makers who have shown their resolve and ability in reining in the economy. The fact that the Chinese economy had weathered strong global financial turbulence is partly attributed to China's highly efficient decision-making mechanism.

Chinese leadership, determined to streamline the administration, reform the economic structure and governance model, has come up with a new mode of thinking about the national development strategies epitomized by the Belt and Road Initiative and the 13th Five-Year Plan. It is widely believed that the Chinese government, experienced and efficient in dealing with various kinds of economic conundrums, can gear the country up for sustainable and high-quality development in future.

Of course, the Chinese economy is not immune from crisis. In Chinese, the word "crisis" means both danger and opportunity that goes with it. In face of the temporary turbulence in the economy, confidence remains solid that China is able to catch hold of the latter.