Making spirit of reform normal

New model of growth isn't just about lower GDP, it's about applying a sound change

China's new normal is a phrase on many lips. But what does it mean, apart from lower GDP growth for the economy? The Lingnan Forum, which took place on March 29 at Lingnan College at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, brought together, for a day, a number of well-qualified Chinese speakers, including a senior lawyer, an insurance regulator, the former head of the Chinese banking regulator Liu Mingkang and other well-known figures from Chinese business and academia, to discuss various aspects of the new normal. The audience consisted of Lingnan students and professors, and businesspeople connected to Lingnan through its EMBA programs. The speakers addressed the issue, in their different ways, of how to normalize and continue the development of the Chinese economy following the headlong growth that averaged around 9 percent annually between 1980 and 2010.

At the forum, the new normal meant different things to different speakers. For lawyer Li Shaoping, it meant reform of China's legal system to make it more transparent, better qualified, more inclusive and fairer. For insurance regulator Chan Wenhui, it meant channeling the huge assets of China's insurance companies into the real economy to obtain higher returns and greater profitability, via investments in the shares of Chinese companies quoted on the main Chinese stock markets, and basing insurance regulation on risk assessment rather than direct involvement in day-to-day corporate operations. For Chan Long, of Alibaba's financial subsidiary, it meant providing an integrated banking service via the mobile Internet to China's consumers. For UnionPay, it meant extending the reach of China's consumer banking services globally. For the research department of China's Finance Ministry, it meant increasing the cost of energy, in order to pay for a cleanup of Chinese power generation.