While the People's Daily was this week confidently predicting that the Chinese economy will zoom along in the fast lane for many years, others are saying catastrophe is lurking just around the corner.
It is the first time doomsayers have been allowed to have their say in what is perhaps a sign of the divergent views and styles of President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji .
Among the pessimists is Yang Fan, a leading commentator and economist from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), who predicts China will stumble into a major crisis within five years or less.
'The signs of an impending crisis are looming large,' he writes in a lengthy analysis published in Strategy And Management, a magazine published by a top Communist Party think-tank. 'Though more people are talking about the possibility, most are still turning a deaf ear. Too many adopt an ostrich position.' Even more outspoken is the Shenzhen-based writer He Qinglian, who fears China's economy is already so bankrupt it is about to sink under the sheer weight of its accumulated debts.
'We all agree about the long-term trends; we only differ on how soon the crisis will break out,' she said during a recent trip to Beijing. 'Yang Fan says five years but I don't think it will take that long.' However, Wang Jiachuan, a top official in the Ministry of Finance, wrote in the People's Daily: 'It is possible for China's economy to maintain a high growth rate 10 to 20 years after the start of the 21st century.' He discounted fears China's golden years were gone for good and argued high growth was bound to be fuelled by heavy spending on infrastructure, housing and urbanisation.
But for Yang, this is just China's nouveaux riches, as he calls them, painting a rosy picture to fool foreigners into investing more of their money.