After 30 years of breakneck growth, the Chinese economy has entered a new normal. While accepting the fact that China's potential growth rate has slowed significantly, it is worth emphasizing that 6.5 percent is still a high growth rate. If such a rate is maintained, China will achieve its objective, set in 2010, of doubling per capita income by the end of 2020.

Over the past 30 years, one of the most important features of China's growth has been its dependence on investment, especially real estate investment. The growth rate of investment has been consistently higher than that of GDP. China has three main areas of investment: real estate, infrastructure and manufacturing. Real estate accounts for one-fourth of the total investment, and for a long period it has been the most profitable of the three.

At the end of 2015, the total floor area of unsold houses in China was more than 700 million square meters, while the average annual floor area of the houses sold in normal times was 1.3 billion sq m.