China faces an economic "hard landing" with growth slowing to 6 percent or less this year, the weakest pace since 1990, Fitch Ratings said today, Bloomberg reported.
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James McCormack, the head of Asian sovereign ratings for Fitch, gave the estimate in a teleconference.
That would be less than half of the 13 percent pace that pushed China past Germany to become the world's third-biggest economy in 2007, according to revised Chinese statistics released this week.
China's economy is running out of steam as exports wane and the property market cools before a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package kicks in. As many as 4 million migrant workers lost their jobs last year as factories closed and that figure may jump by another 5 million in 2009, according to Credit Suisse AG.
The slowdown is hurting companies from airlines to property developers to automobile makers.
China Southern Airlines Co., the nation's largest carrier, reported a "drastic decrease'" in demand last year and sales slid for China Vanke Co., the country's largest publicly traded real-estate developer.