FACED with an edict from paramount leader Deng Xiaoping that ''slow growth is not socialism'', China's economic tsar Zhu Rongji is seeking to redefine what Beijing sees as rapid economic growth.
''All along, we stood for a high economic growth rate because this is the need of the development of China,'' the vice-premier said in an interview with the Asian Wall Street Journal.
''The point is, what can be regarded as a high growth rate? Between 1979 and 1991, it was seven to eight per cent. That is a high rate,'' Mr Zhu said.
The double-digit growth of the last two years was not sustainable. Eight or nine per cent was the optimal level.
However, he conceded that China was unlikely to reduce growth to that level for at least two years.
His comments were generally welcomed by Western economists in Beijing concerned that attempts to push a 13 per cent growth rate even higher could lead to economic dislocation.
''It is refreshing to see that there is at least one person in the senior leadership who has not got carried away with the idea of explosive economic growth,'' one economic analyst said.
