Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.11, 2020

The Transformation of China’s Industrial Structure and Its Potential Economic Growth Rate

(Abstract)

Zhu Min, Zhang Longmei and Peng Daoju

With a view to deepening supply-side structural reform and promoting high-quality development, this paper estimates China’s future industrial structural transformation and the productivity convergence of sub-sectors on the basis of China’s 40-year transformation of its economic structure and cross-country historical experience and predicts China’s economic growth rate for 2030 under different scenarios. The results show that China’s growth rate is expected to remain at a healthy level of 3.9 percent to 4.5 percent by 2030. As China enters the post-industrial period, labor will flow continuously from manufacturing industry to the service sector, which will weaken the contribution of inter-sectoral structural transformation to economic growth. However, higher-skilled services and high-tech industries will help increase the growth rate and become a new growth engine for high-quality economic development. This provides a new policy vision and framework for China to actively respond to the current world economic crisis and to promote sustained and sound economic progress.