BCG CEO optimistic about China's economy

Though CHINA's growth is slowing down as the government set the growth rate in 2019 to between 6 and 6.5 percent, lower than last year's growth rate of 6.6 percent, CEO of Voston Consulting Group (BCG) believes the country's current GDP growth is healthy.

"A slowdown needs to be put in context. CHINA is the second biggest economy in the world, and I believe the current growth rate is actually quite healthy growth for such a huge economy," Rich Lesser, the CEO of BCG, told CGTN on the sideline of the CHINA Development Forum on Saturday.

"I remain optimistic not with the calibration to the growth levels of five or ten years ago, but to the growth levels one should expect from the second biggest economy in the world," he said.

With CHINA's economy maturing, it's natural that the economic growth will slow. The growth rate of an economy in its early stages of development is not comparable to the growth rate as the economy grows and matures.

"The key is not to compare it to the growth we expected from CHINA when it was only a fraction of its current economic size," Lesser said.

"Besides, however you measure it, CHINA's economic growth rate may still higher than what we see in some of the other huge economies in the world," Lesser said.

To see what's really going on with CHINA's economic slowdown, Lesser suggests breaking the growth down. The domestic consumer demand is still ever growing, and the sectors influenced by trade tensions between CHINA and U.S. are slowing down.

"Things related to consumers, health products and other topics are enjoying quite strong growth right now," he said. "Other elements that are related to industrial output and are subjected to trade tensions, such as auto sector, are going through a more difficult time."

"CHINA has enormous opportunities ahead, and if the economic reform and opening-up continue, and the investment in workforce enablement and training continue, the prospects is very good," said the head of BCG.