China's Economic Growth is Dropping to a new Normal

According to today’s official People’s Daily [link here and Bloomberg writeup here], an “authoritative” person who was not identified indicated that China should not support growth by adding leverage. “High leverage will lead to high risk; if not well controlled, it will lead to systemic financial crisis and negative growth”. Considering China’s severe structural problems, this “authoritative” person believes that “China’s economic growth trend in future should be ‘L-shaped’, rather than ‘U-shaped’, not to mention ‘V-shaped’”, which suggests that growth will trend lower. This individual believes China should avoid using strong stimulus to raise investment growth in the short term, as it would create larger problems later. For now, the most important thing, in this person’s view, is to push forward supply-side reforms (i.e., cutting over-capacity, reducing property inventory etc.) and actively but steadily reduce leverage.

link.