Consumption tops agenda
THE STATE COUNCIL, CHINA'S CABINET, announced additional policies on Oct 29 to boost domestic consumption. The announcement came just a day before the US Federal Reserve officially started withdrawing its quantitative easing (QE) stimulus program.
China has to maintain a healthy level of growth as the global economy wanders into the post-QE territory, which is full of uncertainties because the impact of QE is not yet clear. To protect its interests as well as those of its trade partners, China cannot afford to go into too steep a fall in overall growth, even though a mild slowdown will help it squeeze out some wasteful and non-competitive industrial capacity.
A deep decline in growth will hurt too many Chinese companies and their global market partners, which don't want China's consumer market to become any worse than what its third-quarter retail data show.
