China expects 2023 economic growth of slightly more than 5% -PBOC adviser

BEIJING (Reuters) -China is expected to achieve economic growth of slightly more than 5% this year, an adviser to the central bank said on Wednesday.

China’s economic situation is very different from that of Japan in the 1990s and there is no basis for the feared “Japanification”, Wang Yiming, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), told an economic Forum.

Some analysts believe China’s economy, burdened by a property downturn, high debt and aging demographics, is heading towards “Japanification,” which refers to Tokyo’s “lost decades” of economic stagnation since the 1990s.

“There is no Japanification in China, we are still in the medium-to-high growth stage,” Wang said.

The government has set a growth target of around 5% for 2023.

(Reporting by Kevin Yao; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Sharon Singleton)