Timothy Beardson, founder and director of Crosby, a Hong Kong-based independent investment bank, warns a lack of urgency in tackling institutional reforms by the new Chinese leadership could send the country into a downward spiral.
“No country with a steep, consistently declining population has maintained a sharply rising rate of economic growth,” he said at a luncheon yesterday in Hong Kong.
The country faces a number of demographic challenges that will complicate efforts to address other problems, such as environmental destruction, a creaky education regime and a dysfunctional financial system. “The leadership needs to address these things now while China has the financial resources to do so,” Beardson says.
He worries...
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