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Widespread international concerns rose when Beijing announced last week that its economy grew by 6.9 per cent in 2015, just failing to meet the official target of seven per cent for the year.

The gloomy news out of China continues with its weakening stock market, its falling trade figures, its depreciating currency and its softening demand for a range of commodities. Even those discredited advocates of a “China Collapse” from a decade ago have resurfaced to make an “I-told-you-so” comeback.

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But even serious China watchers are worried. Will the Chinese economy have a hard landing? Will the bottom fall out of China’s stock market? Will the Chinese government intervene to stimulate the economy, as it did on a massive scale in late 2008, to lift the rest of the world?

Those who fear China’s growth story is over should note that only half of its 1.4 billion people are urbanized

People long for the old days, when Beijing set a GDP target at the beginning of the year, only to see the real GDP numbers far exceed the official number at year’s end. They miss the commodity super-cycle, which characterized much of the first decade of this century, when China showed an appetite for devouring whatever energy and resources the rest of the world could produce.