Originally published at CNBC | January 9, 2014
Last October, the acrobat Adili Wuxor walked, without safety nets, 100 meters above the Great Wall of China. His feat emulated what Chinese officials achieved in 2013: balancing the economy by alternately tightening and loosening economic policy ahead of the flagship Plenary meeting in November.
So far, China has proved a successful tightrope walker, weighing short-term policy judgment against longer-term considerations. But no matter how China tweaks its monetary policy, and no matter how it implements the reforms announced at the Plenary, it will not create true balance in its economy without one further measure: scrapping the government’s economic growth target.