????1月20日，中國公布2014年經濟年增長率下滑至7.4％，為24年來的最低值。這也是自1998年以來，中國首次未能實現自身年度增長目標。

????中國經濟增長放緩是意料之中的事。固定資產投資減少、房市低迷、地方政府支出控制收緊，共同導致了增長放緩。

????澳新銀行大中華區首席經濟學家劉利剛在香港表示：“雖然離增長目標還差一點，但中國的增長數字已經相當不錯了。”劉利剛指出，去年，隨著中國減少重工業比重，服務業對經濟的貢獻率已經超過了制造業。

????展望未來，中國可能將面臨長達多年的增長放緩。日前，咨詢機構龍洲經訊經濟學家陳龍在香港寫道：“我們認為，2015年中國的經濟增長將繼續逐步走低。”

????問題是將低到什么程度。日前，國際貨幣基金組織預測，2015年中國GDP漲幅將急劇下滑至6.8％，2016年進一步降至僅6.3％，此舉令分析師們緊張不已。國際貨幣基金組織下調了對今年全球經濟增長的預測，預測漲幅從此前的3.8％下調至僅3.5％，原因之一即在此。

????China announced today its annual growth rate slipped to 7.4% in 2014, the lowest figure in 24 years and the first time the country has missed its yearly growth rate target since 1998.

????A slowdown was not unexpected. Lower investment in fixed assets, a property downturn and tighter control over local governments’ spending all contributed to lower growth.

????“It missed the target by a touch, but the number is still quite good,” says Li-Gang Liu?, Chief Economist Greater China at ANZ in Hong Kong, who notes that China’s service sector continued gaining share last year to outpace manufacturing’s contribution to the economy as the country transforms itself away from heavy industry.

????Looking forward, China likely faces years of lower growth. “We believe that China’s growth will continue follow a gradual downward trajectory this year,” wrote Chen Long, an economist at Gavekal Dragonomics in Hong Kong today.

????How low is the question. The International Monetary Fund rattled analysts today when it predicted China’s GDP growth in 2015 to fall much more sharply—to 6.8% this year and only 6.3% next year. That revision was one of the reasons that the Fund downgraded its forecast for the global economy this year to only 3.5% from a previous estimate of 3.8%.

????For the past couple of months, China’s state-run press has been relentlessly running stories about China’s “new normal” and telegraphing the government’s likely reduction in the 2015 GDP target to 7% growth. “The country’s period of miraculous break-neck growth is over, but let’ s get over it,” state-run Xinhua wrote today.

????Even in the beginning of 2014, China was downplaying its growth potential. Only a day after Premier Li Keqiang announced China’s growth target of 7.5% earlier last year, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei undercut him and said 7.2% growth would be just fine.

????Nomura analysts led by Chang Chun Hua in Hong Kong spell out the likely scenario by which China’s growth continues slowing. It shouldn’t be completely unwelcome.

????“The economy will resume its downtrend … given deep-rooted domestic challenges such as tighter controls over local government debt, the property market correction and deleveraging,” Hua writes. “For 2015, we maintain our GDP growth forecast of 6.8%.”

????China’s announced reforms for state-run enterprises, shadow banking, and local government debt should reduce growth but contribute to a healthier economy which is struggling under a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of 250%.

????ANZ’s Liu says China’s service sector’s performance in 2014 is an important takeaway from the GDP announcements. The contribution from services to GDP growth was 3.8 percentage points vs. manufacturing’s 3 percentage points. He says, “This also explains, despite China’s slowing growth over the past four years, the new jobs created are growing year by year.” Services employ more people than do automated factories.

????It also explains why a growth rate that is still by far the fastest of any large economy in the world isn’t translating one-for-one into consumption of commodities such as oil, iron ore and copper, prices for which have tumbled in the last six months as markets wake up to how much they have overestimated the profile of Chinese demand growth.

????Today’s GDP growth slowdown was just as apparent in the third quarter, when China’s quarterly growth hit a five-year low. Back then Chinese stocks fell on the news. In a hint that investors may be getting used to a slowing China, stocks in Shanghai rose by 2% today.