China's `New Normal' Growth Model Is Starting to Get Expensive

``The world's second-largest economy is growing at its slowest pace in 25 years, forcing the central bank to cut interest rates five times since November and funnel credit to local governments to finance new construction. Estimates vary on the overall size of spending given the difficulty in netting out new expenditure and money that would have been spent anyway. Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong, expects the stimulus package to be as large as the one rolled out in 2009 and 2010, with fixed asset investment of up to 10 trillion yuan ($1.57 trillion) over the next two to three years.''