Interview: Russian expert says China's economy promising despite challenges

China, which is switching to a new consumption-oriented economic growth model, faces numerous challenges in economic development, but the country will be able to cope with them in spite of a certain slowdown, a leading Russian expert has said.

Yakov Berger, senior researcher with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua in an interview Thursday that he did not believe in recession prospects in China, as there were no indicators of possible negative growth over an extended period of time.

"China won't see a two-digit growth it used to have before, but it will be enough to complete the tasks set by the Chinese government," Berger said.

He believed that in the nearest future China would pursue a controlled, medium-high annual growth rate between 6 and 7 percent.

"I expect a slowdown of rates of growth, which may be even lower than 6.9 percent, as it was last year, maybe just 6.5 or 6 percent or even less. But these are medium growth rates and they will be positive, not negative," he said.

China's old model of economic growth, which used cheap labor forces and large-scale export as drivers for two or three decades, is no longer working, Berger said.

So now China is switching to a new economic growth model with domestic consumption, the service industry and technical innovation as the three driving forces, according to the expert.

Such changes imply a long and complicated task of raising the spending capacity of the population, Berger said.

Meanwhile, the process would change China from a "world factory" into a "world laboratory" with technical innovations that could be rather competitive at the global market, he added.

At the moment China has only a few high-tech companies which are competitive globally like Lenovo or Huawei, Berger said when calling on China to "develop its super giants which would both create new technologies and apply them in production."

The expert also noted other challenges and problems that need to be solved by the Chinese government, such as excess industrial capacity and urbanization.

According to Berger, China is implementing its own unique social and economic model, and building socialism with Chinese characteristics.

"Only such a giant country as China can use its tools and methods," Berger said.

He expressed the hope that while tackling domestic problems, China would bring benefit to its neighboring countries and the whole world. Endi