(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-10 14:00

BEIJING  -- The Chinese economy might already have begun its cyclical adjustment and its growth is set to slow in the next few years, a Beijing-based weekly reported Tuesday, quoting Xu Xianchun,National Bureau of Statistics deputy director.

"According to our initial judgement, 2007 was probably the peak point of the current Chinese economic growth curve. The growth rate from this year on will slow down gradually," Xu told China Economic Weekly, a magazine run by the country's mass-selling newspaper The People's Daily.

According to Xu, the Chinese economy had registered a double-digit growth rate in the past five consecutive years since 2003. The growth rate was an average of 12.8 percent annually.

It was the second time since 1990 that the world's fourth largest economy witnessed such robust growth. Between 1992 and 1996, the Chinese economy soared annually by 12.4 percent on average.

Such growth, however, would not last given the law of economic cycles, Xu said, adding a slowdown was certainly to take place after a peak point on the growth curve.

"Globally, it is rare for the economies to sustain a double-digit growth rate for five years in a row. So far, only Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have scored such performance."

He added another sign of a slowdown in the economy existed in the fact that China's growth rates for 2008 forecast by international financial institutions were all lower than 11.9 percent, the 2007 growth rate for the country.

He said the cyclical fluctuation, this time, was expected to be much milder than that in the 1990-1999 cycle and the Chinese economy looked to make a successful soft-landing in the coming years.

According to Xu, in 1999, China reported an annual growth rate of 7.9 percent, which he said was the trough of the 1990-1999 cycle.

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