Assuming that parity with the first world is their goal.
They may feel that reducing the gaps between rich and poor, they make the goverment more stable, and the population less likely to revolt.
Also, by slowing the growth of numbers of people with access to modern TV/internet/..., you may restrict the effect of political activists.
Could you explain in small words why a 9% growth rate is not a 9% growth rate per captia? I'm not sure I understand this, unless chinese people breed rather faster than we do.
I may not have expressed myself well. China basically has two economies. There is the first world style industrial economy which is growing rapidly, and there is the peasant subsistence agriculture economy which isn't growing at all. The latter covers more than half of the Chinese population. So when you break things down on a per capita basis, the high growth of the first world economic sector doesn't put many yuan in the pockets of the average Chinese.
I should add that Chinese agriculture is rapidly changing from primarily subsistence farming to market oriented farming. Chinese farmers are now allowed to lease land from the government for 30 year terms, and grow pretty much what they want for sale in a relatively free competitive market, though a fixed percentage still has to be sold at government mandated (reduced) prices.
This market reform has led to a near doubling of agricultural output, but average farm incomes are declining. As in the US, a Chinese farmer now has to be a fairly big operator to make a comfortable living (the fact that he *can* make a comfortable living is new, though). And that means a lot of the small farmers are going to have to look elsewhere to earn a living. That elsewhere is the first world economic sector, which has to grow fast enough to accommodate them.
High growth rates in the first world economic sector are necessary to provide good jobs for those Chinese who are going to be moving off the farm in increasing numbers. The US went through this in the middle of the last century, now China is facing the same thing, but the numbers involved are dauntingly larger.
Note that the Chinese government still restricts such mobility. There aren't yet enough jobs available to absorb the hordes who do want to leave the farm. This could be a source of unrest if job creation is slowed even further. That's why I think the idea that the Chinese government wants to slow growth to curb rural unrest is most likely misdirection to cover other problems, such as the strains rapid growth have placed on the Chinese financial system.
But I could be wrong. It could be that the Chinese leadership believes it will be easier to control rural peasants than it would be to control urban workers with a taste of first world prosperity, a somewhat wider perspective on the world, and how their part of it should be governed. Tiananmen Square still looms large over the political landscape of China.
The many reforms that have occurred in China seem to indicate that the current leadership wants to improve the lot of their people, but that old line communist indoctrination runs deep among the ruling cadres, and absolute control may still loom larger on their radar screens than enabling the dreams of upward mobility of the Chinese people.
Gary
I believe that it is. Nearly everything the current leadership has done shows that they want China to achieve parity with other first world nations. They face daunting problems to get there, but they mostly seem to be taking the right steps. Slowing growth seems an aberration which runs counter to nearly all their other actions.
If so, I think they're sadly mistaken. Restricting opportunities for upward mobility is the surest way I know to breed resentment in a population. Chinese expectations have been raised very high by the last decade's economic policies. Frustrating those expectations now appears politically dangerous to me.
Realize that China is in the Horatio Alger stage of their development. They haven't yet reached the fat cynical stage which permits the luxury of class envy.
Now that may be closer to the mark. As I said in another message, Tiananmen Square still looms large over the political landscape of China. Ignorant rural peasants still form the backbone of their army, and their last resort to maintain control. I hope they aren't so cynical that they are willing to keep over 50% of their population poor and ignorant simply to maintain that brutal club. But they may be.
Gary
Make that "primary goal". The first goal above all others is the perpetuation of the party. Practically anything seen to threaten this, including too many educated people, ... is going to be thought about very carefully, even if it means hundreds of millions living in poverty longer than otherwise.
I do know far less about china than I should.
It seems to me that one nightmare of the leadership might be what a billion people with internet enabled phones would do.
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