China’s era of rocketing growth is over, according to the chief
economist for Asia-ex Japan at Credit Suisse, during the Swiss bank’s Asian Investor
Conference last week.

“The golden age of China’s infrastructure investment,
housing boom, exports and monetary expansion is behind us,” said Dong Tao at
the conference held in Hong Kong’s Marriott Hotel last Thursday. 

He predicted that
the real average GDP growth with slow, from its peak of 10.3 per cent between
2000 and 2009, to an average of 7.5 per cent between 2010-2019. It will dwindle
to 4 per cent there after, Tao said.

Tao anticipates that commodity demand will soon come to an
end as “the growth engine shifts from property, exports and infrastructure
towards consumption,” he said.

However although Credit Suisse sees a gradual slowdown,
there is still plenty of upside in Asian stocks, said Robert Prior-Wandesford,
the Singapore-based senior economist and head of Southeast Asia and India
economics at the Swiss bank.

He said stocks in Asia have increased more than 10 per cent
so far this year and should rise by the same amount again before the end of
2012.

So far this year the benchmark MSCI Asia Pacific ex Japan
Index has risen 14 per cent. American large cap stocks have also posted healthy returns,
with the S&P500 climbing 10 per cent this year.

Prior-Wandesford added that although Asia ex Japan has not been
immune from the global financial crisis, the region has recovered quickly, and has
now surpassed the bottom of its trough.

Asian economies are predicted to grow 7.8 per cent in 2012, far outpacing global growth of 2.5 percent, according to the annual report from the World Bank in January.