China President: Economic Recovery A Tortuous Process

Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Monday (October 7) he expected global economic recovery to be a "long and torturous process", while China's economic growth rate of about seven percent was "within a reasonable and expected range".

Speaking on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit, Xi said the world economy was in the middle of profound adjustment.

"To achieve a full recovery and healthy growth of the world economy will be a long and tortuous process," he said in a speech on the Indonesian island of Bali.

APEC, which accounts for 55 percent of global real gross domestic product (GDP) growth, said in a joint statement last week that "risks remain tilted to the downside" and that economic growth would be slower and less balanced than desired.

China's GDP grew at 7.6 percent for the first half of 2013, slower than 9.3 percent in 2011 and 7.7 percent last year.

Xi brushed aside concern of a hard landing for the Chinese economy, however, saying a "seven percent annual growth rate will suffice" to meet China's medium-term goal of doubling per capita income by 2020.

"Everything has been going as expected, nothing has come as a surprise. The slowdown of the Chinese economy is an intended result of our own regulatory initiatives. This is because to achieve the goal of doubling the 2010 GDP and per capita income by 2020, a seven percent annual growth rate will suffice," Xi said.

Presented by Adam Justice