“All of the talk about deflation, a year of Japanese-style decade of lost growth, I think that’s not going to happen.”

This week, the International Monetary Fund will release its latest outlook on the global economy. In July, the fund was expecting China to record growth of 5.2 per cent this year and 4.5 per cent in 2024.

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Analysts are expecting the fund to downgrade its expectations for China because of recent events.

Park said the Chinese economy would slow, but the question was by how much and when it started to approach the growth levels normally associated with rich nations such as Australia and the United States.

“Structurally, the Chinese economy is growing slower and slower over time,” he said.

“It’s an ageing society, it’s had a very steady productivity slowdown for a decade or more, the labour force is shrinking in absolute terms … these are structural things we know are going to produce slower growth going forward.

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“It’s just a question if they can get back to five, six, seven [per cent growth] versus three, four, five. I don’t think it’s set in stone, I think it also depends on their policy choices.”

Park said a long-standing issue for Chinese authorities was the conservative nature of consumers and the heavy investment of the government in supply-side responses to economic slowdowns.

He said even when dealing with climate change, the government was more interested in subsidies for production than encouraging consumers to spend their pent-up savings on ways to reduce their greenhouse emissions.

According to Park, authorities needed to start looking at ways to make the overall economy more dynamic.

“It reflects to me a bigger concern of economic policy. It tends to not really emphasise competition, and be more protective of firms and be more state-led,” he said.

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