China drives global economy despite slowdown

Despite the slowdown in its manufacturing industries in the first half of this year, some new areas of manufacturing, such as robots, electric vehicles, servers, smart terminals and locomotives, have experienced fast growth. In particular, a booming financial sector and the fast-growing courier industry made good contributions to China's economy in the first few months of this year. Unfolding are the positive effects of the continuous cuts in deposit reserve requirement and interest rates, increased fiscal spending, tax reductions and the launching of a series of major investment and consumption projects, and they will help China regain its stable economic momentum and realize the targeted 7 percent growth for 2015.

Despite its economic slowdown, China still contributed more than 30 percent to world economic growth in 2014. The 7 percent growth, although slowest in decades, is still the fastest among the world's major economies. And because of its enormous economic base, even a 7 percent growth will result in a huge additional increase that will maintain China's position as an economic powerhouse.

China's ongoing efforts to further open up to the outside world, ease restrictions on the entry of foreign capital, expedite the formation of bilateral and multilateral free trade areas and, in particular, its push for the Belt and Road Initiative will deepen its economic links with the world. And it will still be a major driver of global economic growth.

On another level, China's slowdown will have a considerable impact on resources-exporting countries highly dependent on its market. But China has only seen a limited decline in commodity imports in the past months.

China's crude oil imports increased 9.8 percent in the January-August period, up 1.4 percentage points year-on-year. And its cereal imports increased 84.6 percent in the same period.

The main reason for the considerable decline in China's imports from the statistical point of view is the fall of import prices. Taking the price factor into consideration, China's actual imports fell only about 4 percent in the first eight months.

The author is a researcher with the State Information Center.