Assessing China’s capability to manage the high-probability risks to economic growth: fiscal, governance and ecological problems

China’s economy has been like a speeding car for almost 30 years. Not surprisingly, it is becoming more common to hear glowingly optimistic assessments of China’s future than dismissively pessimistic ones. For example, Jim O’Neill et al. (2005) of Goldman Sachs have predicted that China’s GDP would surpass that of the United States in 2040 even after assuming that China’s GDP growth rate would slow down steadily from its average annual of 10 per cent in the 1979-2005 period to 3.8 per cent in the 2030-2040 period.2