Asian market round up: China bear watch

Last month in this space Euromoney predicted the rise of a breed of analysts somewhat clumsily dubbed ‘below eight-percenters’, that is analysts forecasting GDP growth rates for China in 2009 below the 8% threshold that was the consensus towards the end of last year and was the government target. So it has come to pass, and sooner than expected: a note published on January 5 by Jun Ma, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, predicts GDP growth for China to decline to 7% in 2009 and 6.6% in 2010. The team at RBS were gloomier still just over two weeks later, forecasting 6% for 2009. Will the first ‘below five-percenters’ please make themselves known?