(ECNS) -- China's economy has stepped into a "new normal" phase and will tend towards L-shaped growth, a high-level central government official said on Monday.
China's economy was expected to grow by 6.9 percent in 2015, and this growth is still quite remarkable in terms of global slow growth, said Han Jun, deputy director of the Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, at a briefing in New York.
He also said China's economy contributed to more than 30 percent of world growth from 2009 to 2014, with an annual growth of 8.7 percent. During that period, China had neither a hard landing nor a derailment.
Han said it's inevitable that the Chinese economy will transform its growth model from investment and export-driven to domestic demand and consumption.
"The pressure for downward economic growth is huge. We have not hit the bottom yet," he said.
He added that China's economy will not see U or V-shaped growth, but will be L-shaped in the future. China will see annual economic growth of less than seven percent for a period of time.
"It will be good news for the world if China successfully transforms itself," he added.
Han said the bottom line of China's economic growth from 2016 to 2020 will be 6.5 percent. This must happen in order to realize the country's goal of doubling the 2010 GDP and per-capita income of residents both in cities and rural areas by 2020.
The term "new normal" has been frequently mentioned by China's leaders. It is characterized by a shift from high speed growth to medium-to-high; a shift from focusing on quantity and speed to quality and efficiency; a shift from stressing production expansion to improving current production; and a shift from growth being driven by conventional engines to growth increasingly driven by new ones.
