Economic growth will be below 8% in 2013: experts

Seventy-two out of 100 surveyed economists hold that China’s economy will expand 7 to 8 percent in 2013 owing to continuous curbs on real estate and a weak international market amid the slow world economic recovery, said a recent white paper launched by Hexun.com and Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Li Yang, deputy head of the academy, said that China’s economic growth has entered a phase of cyclical slowdown after fast expansion in the past three decades while adding that economic growth has to rely on investment, which may lead to overcapacity.

China’s GDP rose 7.8 percent year-on-year in 2012 to about 52 trillion yuan ($8.36 trillion) while the fourth quarter saw economic grow 7.9 percent after slowdown for seven quarters, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.