Only 20 per cent or so of investors polled by BofAML thought that Chinese growth was even approaching the official 7 per cent, ignoring the National Stats bureau’s claims that the figures for Q2 growth “objectively reflect the real situation.”
It’s funny again, looking at that chart, how quickly the narrative around China has changed. As Pettis has written a few times, it used to be rather less usual to find China watchers who thought the growth rate would be much less than 8-9 per cent over the rest of the decade. No longer. And, under a rebalancing narrative or otherwise, parameters of bearishness and bullishness will likely have to adapt further.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
