In the new normal, the economy needs fine-tuning

Various aspects of China's new economic normal become clearer by the day. One of those is that as the macroeconomy faces increasing downward pressure, regional economies are feeling the pinch, no more so than in the northeast and in the west, where decline has been substantial and sustained.

In Liaoning, fixed-asset investment has shrunk 15.4 percent this year, giving it the dubious distinction of being the only province or region that had negative growth. Growth in Heilongjiang province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region was also in the doldrums. Growth in the west as a whole was 9.9 percent in the first half of the year, compared with 13.5 percent in East China and 15.7 percent in Central China. In Gansu, Shaanxi and Qinghai provinces and the Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions, growth this year is down 10 percent compared with last year.

With the sharp decline in investment, industrial growth also fell sharply. In the first half of the year, the added value of industrial enterprises above a designated size in Northeast China fell 2.2 percent year-on-year, 0.6 percentage points more than in the first quarter this year, and the employment rate in those enterprises fell 9 percent.