China is already leaning towards some additional stimulus, with Premier Li Keqiang ordering the central bank pump additional money into the banking system, while President Xi Jinping has announced the need for more spending on “new infrastructure”.

“Are there other ways out for China except stimulus policies?” rhetorically asked Liu Shijin, who previously worked closely with Vice-Premier Liu He, the top economic aide to Xi, at the Development Research Centre, the think tank attached to the State Council.

“If it really works, why can’t Japan and the United States reach a 5 per cent growth rate?”

Liu Shijin, who is now a deputy head of the China Development Research Foundation and a policy adviser to the People’s Bank of China, argued that a growth rate averaging 5 per cent over the next decade is sufficient for China to meet its development goals.

Growth in 2020, though, may well be below 5 per cent given that the impact of the coronavirus is “unprecedented” and larger than both severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003 and the 2008 global financial crisis.

But as this will mainly rely on corporate and private investment, Liu Shijin feels it will be too small to engineer a major rebound in the growth rate.

“It’s a different thing compared to real [government-led] economic stabilisation,” Liu Shijin told a web seminar hosted by Peking University’s National School of Development on Wednesday.

“When encountering challenges, we should first push forward new reform measures to unleash growth potential. Now is the right time.”

Instead, to support longer-term growth, China should put its efforts into the development of its “city clusters”, which could lead to higher spending on housing construction, urban infrastructure and manufacturing, added Liu Shijin, which would increase the growth rate by up to an additional percentage point over the next decade.

Zhang Bin, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said infrastructure construction will remain an important part of any plan to support growth.

“If the funding [for the 4 trillion yuan stimulus] had come solely from treasury bonds or local government bonds [rather than risky lending], there wouldn’t be so much shadow banking, unmanageable credit expansion, high leverage, implicit liabilities or financial risks,” he said.

“If the balance sheets of corporations, households and local governments can’t be repaired, it might lead to insufficient demand and a decline into a vicious [downward] cycle.”

Zhang, like Liu Shijin, is a key member of the China Finance 40 Forum, a group of state economists who advocate more structural reforms to support the Chinese economy. In particular, Zhang has set sights on reforms that would boost consumption, which accounted for 58 per cent of Chinese growth last year.

Currently, most large Chinese cities only provide social services including health care and schooling to residents who have a legal permit, or hukou. Most migrant workers who come to the big cities for jobs are blocked from obtaining a hukou, meaning they have to travel back to their rural hometowns to have access to basic social services, so often do not settle in their adopted city.

In response to this idea, Xu Yuan, a professor at Peking University, called for the government to build 10 million affordable housing units annually to accommodate new urban citizens, which would address short-term economic pain and serve the nation’s long-term development.

China will release its annual growth target as well as other key goals, including the fiscal deficit ratio and local bond quota, at the National People’s Congress, although the annual parliamentary convention, previously scheduled for March 5, has been postponed, with a new date yet to be announced.