Ministers endorse Chinese optimism

Maybe the fears of a hard landing for the Chinese economy that are convulsing financial markets are just a bad dream.

That at least is the impression an array of ministers, officials and bankers sought to convey at this weekend's annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank on the South Korean resort island of Cheju.

Whether they genuinely agreed or were just being polite, ministers lined up to endorse the judgment of Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqing that Beijing would succeed in slowing its fast-growing economy to a sustainable pace without crashing into the buffers.

"Chinese authorities are taking tightening measures carefully," Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said yesterday. "I believe a soft landing will be achieved."

With imports expanding at an annual rate of around 40 per cent, China has given a particularly big boost to its Asian neighbours, and it has also been accounting for a quarter of global growth.

"Don't be driven by emotion or hysteria," the ADB's chief economist, Ifzal Ali, said. Ali argued that a hard landing for China would not be a catastrophe, because growth in rich countries was picking up.

"We have to remember that the Chinese economy is significantly smaller than the Japanese economy or the economy of the United States," Ali said. "If China sneezes, you're not going to catch pneumonia. You might catch a cold."

But several ministers betrayed anxiety that recent figures have yet to show much of a slowdown in response to a raft of credit-tightening steps and administrative orders from Beijing to cool investment in overheated sectors.

"I believe the current Chinese government leadership is more than capable of successfully dealing with these issues in the medium term," South Korean Finance Minister Lee Hun-Jai said.

"However, to cover all bases, just in case, the Korean government is preparing a contingencyplan," Lee added. South Korea's exports to China, which make up 20 per cent of the total, have been growing at a 50 percent clip.

Even India, whose trading ties with China are much more modest than South Korea's, would still feel the impact of a hard landing in sectors such as steel, added Suman Bery, director-general of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, a New Delhi think-tank.

Overall for Asia, though, a sharp slowdown would not be a fundamental threat to growth, according to Stanley Fischer, the former number two official at the International Monetary Fund.

"Growth could slow down. We could get a reversal, but I don't think it's a crisis," he said.