AFP/Beijing

China’s annual GDP growth slowed to its weakest rate in more than two decades in 2014, according to an AFP survey, projecting

further deceleration in the world’s second-largest economy this year.
The median forecast in a poll of 15 economists saw the Asian giant’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanding 7.3% last year, down

from 7.7% in 2013.
That would be the worst full-year result since the 3.8% recorded in 1990 – the year after the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) releases the official GDP figures for the fourth quarter and the whole of 2014 tomorrow.
For this year, the economists see growth slowing further to a median 7%, as Chinese leaders proclaim a “new normal” of slower

expansion and emphasise economic reforms.
“China may introduce many restructuring and reform measures this year and this may have some negative impact on economic growth,”

ANZ economist Liu Li-Gang said.
He said that they might include changes to state-owned enterprises, financial reforms such as interest rate liberalisation and

looser restrictions on private banks.
China, a main driver of global growth, was beset last year by problems ranging from weakness in manufacturing and trade to

financial worries over rising debt levels and falling real estate prices, which have sent shockwaves through the key property

sector.
For October to December 2014, the survey saw GDP as having risen a median 7.2% year-on-year.
That would be marginally weaker than the third quarter’s 7.3%, and the worst quarterly result since the first three months of

2009, when growth logged a 6.6% expansion during the global financial crisis.
Authorities appeared to take last year’s performance largely in their stride, sticking to a scenario whereby the country’s

consumers take the lead in underpinning expansion in coming years, emphasising in public statements the quality of growth rather

than its size. “China has entered a new normal of economic growth,” Li Baodong, a vice foreign minister, told reporters on

Friday, repeating a newly favoured phrase of the country’s leaders.
“That is to say we are going through structural adjustment and the structural adjustment is progressing steadily.”
Purveyors of high-quality consumer goods such as neighbours Japan and South Korea, as well as Europe and the US, could stand to

benefit from the remodelling of the economy.
But the implications of slowing Chinese growth for the rest of the world are already visible. Commodity exporters such as

Australia have suffered, after profiting immensely from China’s boom years when expansion averaged 10%, hitting 14.2% as recently

as 2007.
There were limits to official nonchalance in Beijing, however, as a series of measures dubbed “mini-stimulus” by economists were

put in place from April, while in November the People’s Bank of China cut interest rates for the first time in more than two

years to try to put a floor on the slowdown.