BEIJING (AFP) - China's third-quarter growth figures to be released on Friday are likely to show only a slight slowing of the economy despite a series of measures brought in to prevent overheating, analysts say.
Economists expect July-September gross domestic product (GDP) growth to have reached between 8.5 and nine percent compared with a year ago, far from the promised soft landing, let alone a much-feared hard landing.
"There's no landing. They're still going on. Growth is still on the fast track," said Chen Xingdong, chief economist with BNP Paribas Peregrine Securities in Beijing.
China's GDP expanded by 9.8 percent in the first quarter and 9.6 percent in the second, boosting the world economy and contributing to the highest global oil prices in history.
Some analysts believe the Chinese economy has been growing -- and is still growing -- at a much higher speed, possibly in the double digits, fueled by continued brisk investment.
One relatively reliable indicator is energy consumption, which is currently increasing by between 15 and 16 percent from a year ago, according to Andy Xie, Hong Kong-based chief Asia economist at Morgan Stanley.
"It's a bubble," he said, adding that it will eventually burst "like every bubble."
While there are widespread jitters among policy-makers in Beijing that economic activity is too high, they are equally worried that they might pull the brakes too abruptly.
"The government has two concerns, overheating and overcooling," said Chen. "This is a historic growth opportunity, and they can't miss out on it."
Instead of reining in growth across the board, as it did a decade ago to the chagrin of millions who lost their jobs, China this time has tried to target individual red-hot sectors such as property and auto manufacturing.
Curbs on new auto loans or on construction of luxury dwellings are elements in this campaign of precision strikes meant to avoid collateral damage in parts of the economy where growth is still considered healthy.
"Generally speaking, the risk of a hard landing has passed," said Zhang Jun, an economics professor at Shanghai's Fudan University. "China can reach the goals set out in its macroeconomic control plans."
If this is true, it is good news not just for China's 1.3 billion people but also for workers and their families throughout East Asia who have thrived on the demand of the voracious Chinese economy.
Export-fueled economies like Taiwan and South Korea have grown increasingly dependent on supplying the Chinese market, which has also been credited, at least partially, with the recent improvement in the Japanese economy.
"A hard landing could be potentially disastrous for the rest of Asia, especially if it leads to a large fall-off in Chinese imports," said John Cairns, a Singapore-based analyst at research firm IDEAglobal.
With the high stakes involved, China has been extremely reluctant to consider an interest rate hike, which would be a powerful but also blunt instrument, killing off economic activity in areas where it is not needed.
Adding to China's unwillingness to touch interest rates, local-currency lending rates have stayed at the current level for a decade now.
Some economists suspect China of massaging its macroeconomic data to suit its policy objectives, undermining the credibility of statistics like those made public on Friday.
"The government doesn't want to raise interest rates, so they will publish figures that are consistent with this aim," said Morgan Stanley's Xie.
One possible indication that the government is getting ready to bend the figures is a recent revision of 2003 economic growth from 9.1 percent to 9.3 percent.
A rise in the base which this year's figures are compared against means the 2004 growth rate will automatically be lower than would otherwise have been the case, observers argued.