Former World Bank chief economist and senior adviser to the Chinese government Justin Lin has criticised widespread pessimism among economists and investors about the outlook for the world’s second-largest economy and predicted it would grow between 7.5 per cent and 8 per cent for the next 20 years.

Mr Lin’s comments come amid rising alarm at China’s slowing growth, which appears to be on track for its poorest performance since 1990. That year the country was facing international sanctions in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The lowest rate of growth since then was 7.6 per cent in 1999.

“In the past 33 years the prediction about the coming collapse of the Chinese economy has appeared periodically and that kind of prediction was cherished by many people,” Mr Lin said yesterday. “I’m reasonably confident the Chinese government has the ability to maintain a 7.5 to 8 per cent growth rate.”