Economy at Risk of Long-Term ‘Downward Spiral,’ State Researcher Says

The head of an influential state-backed think tank has forecast that China’s economic expansion may be entering a long-term “downward spiral” as all three engines of growth — investment, exports and consumption — slow down.

The comments by Li Yang, head of the National Institution for Finance & Development (NIFD) and the former deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, come against the backdrop of increasing concern among the country’s top policymakers about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy and the impact of the trade war with the U.S. Gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of all goods and services produced in an economy, rose by 6.5% year-on-year in the third quarter, the lowest in almost a decade.