How Badly Is China's Economy Doing?

There is an immutable rule in nature and economics. The bigger you are, the harder it is to grow. The dinosaurs tried and failed. There are verbal reports of Chinese academics calculating China's 2018 economic growth at as low as 1.5 per cent, rather than the official 6.5 per cent. That seems too low to me but when I tested it among my China-based investment management buddies, it caused little surprise. After all, we have seen substantial declines in many of China's economic indicators in the past year. That slow pace would put China behind the US, which overstimulated its own economy through big tax breaks.