Lower growth is on the cards, alongside other worrying trends

Authorities last week released statistics on the economy's overall performance in 2011.

In the National Bureau of Statistics' (NBS) preliminary report, gross domestic product was 47.16 trillion yuan (HK$58.03 trillion), showing annualised growth of 9.2 per cent.

By comparison, according to an NBS correction in September, the mainland's 2010 GDP was 40.1 trillion yuan, based on growth of 10.4 per cent from the previous year.

The mainland press spotted a few trends in the economy in 2011. One to watch is inflation, according to a commentary on Ce.cn, a government-owned website focusing on economic policies. The year saw a rise in the consumer price index, a major measure of inflation, of 5.4 per cent, despite continuous good harvests of agricultural staples.

That exceeded the government's overall price control target, made at the beginning of the year, by almost 1.5 percentage points.

A second trend, noted by National Business Daily, was the possible decline in foreign direct investment (FDI), partly due to diminishing capital in developed countries and a rapid rise in China's own wages. FDI has long been a driving force for China's export-led business growth.

But over the last two months of 2011, China saw a net decrease in FDI. There was a 9.76 per cent year-on-year decline in November, which the country had not seen for the previous 28 months. This was followed by an even bigger decrease of 12.73 per cent in December.