China must quickly ‘quench the immediate thirst’ of a deepening economic slowdown, senior economist Yu Yongding says
- Yu Yongding, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is the first domestic economist to call for Beijing to protect the growth rate in 2019
- President Xi Jinping has already warned of the challenges ahead in 2019, without specifically mentioning the trade war with the United States
Arresting a deepening economic slowdown, not making “baseless” deep-rooted structural reforms, should be the top priority for China’s economy in 2019, a senior economist said.
Yu Yongding believes Beijing needs to take every possible measure, including increasing money supply and boosting fiscal spending, to prevent the world’s second largest economy from tanking.
“China’s experiences in the last 40 years have told us that, all the problems will worsen if we can’t maintain economic growth rate at a certain level,” Yu, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by the China Business News as saying on Tuesday.
“Without a certain level of economic growth speed, structural adjustments or economic system reform will be baseless.”
The comments by Yu, a former member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee who has been advising Chinese policymakers for years, came at a time when growth is quickly losing steam amid the trade war with the United States, reflecting growing concerns among researchers about a sharp deceleration.
