Expert opinion

George Magnus, senior independent economic adviser for UBS in London

"I think there is little question that rebalancing is happening. It was always going to happen in my view. The only questions were how and how quickly."

Duncan Innes-Ker, regional editor for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit

"I think we can be fairly confident that the trend for the service sector to be the larger part of the economy is going to continue but when it comes to consumption, we still need to see what happens in the second half."

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics

"The glass-half-full view is that the imbalance has stopped getting worse. The half-empty view is that the difficult transition of weaning the economy off investment has not yet begun."

Jonathan Garner, chief Asia strategist of Morgan Stanley, based in Hong Kong

"If you look at the economic history of both South Korea and Japan, China is about to reach the GDP per capita that they both reached when a consumer society took hold."

Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland

"I think data relating to consumption, investment and exports can be pretty decent at an annual level but more problematic in making firm conclusions about it at a quarterly level."

Yifan Hu, managing director, chief economist and head of research at Haitong International, the Shanghai-based securities firm

"This is very much a long-term program. Maybe in the short term, even judging by the recent data, we haven't made a lot of progress yet, but I think the government is making a significant effort."

Zhu Tian, professor of economics at CEIBS in Shanghai

"My central argument is there is no need for rebalancing anyway. If consumption is low and investment is high, what is wrong with that because consumption actually doesn't make the economy grow. It is investment that does that."

Oliver Barron, head of the Beijing office, North Square Blue Oak, the global institutional broker and research company

"The United States became a consumer society through consumer finance and spending on credit cards, and I think China will do it the same way."

(China Daily European Weekly 07/25/2014 page6)