Appraising the Economic Growth Prospects of China’s Services Sector

Abstract

This article examines the economic growth prospects of China’s services sector. Reportage on China’s economy and its data releases tends to focus largely on aggregate GDP growth, manufacturing growth, retail sales and investments, and fails to adequately cover services despite them being the largest contributor to growth. The article parses the growth of China’s various services subcomponents across a range of parameters and assesses that the industry has come under duress with a slowdown in complementary manufacturing and the dissipation of growth bubbles in finance and real estate. It is further observed that reforms necessary for spurring services growth are at a nascent stage, proceed slowly, and are imperilled by GDP growth targets that result in policies favouring the manufacturing industry. In sum, while China’s services growth prospects are hardly in dire jeopardy due to favourable demand-side conditions, achieving potential and affecting convergence with high income countries will necessitate the expedition of reforms and the engineering of a sustained high growth phase in the sector.