China's push into services risks long-term growth stagnation

Beijing

BEIJING'S efforts to put China's economy on a more sustainable growth path are focusing on shifting from investment-intensive manufacturing jobs to the services sector, but clumsy attempts to force the transition could do more harm than good.

As China looks set to post its slowest annual economic growth in decades on Tuesday, officials hope that a rapidly expanding service sector will generate more than enough jobs to offset losses in inefficient "sunset" industries which have been heavily reliant on export demand.