Chinese leaders are scheduled to meet at the nation’s highest-level economic decision-making meeting in Beijing within two weeks. Economists are expecting inflation will rise to between 4% and 5% and economic growth will fall slightly to about 9% next year. Every December the leadership lays down the new theme or strategy for the country’s development the following year at the central economic work conference. With no one talking about government stimulus any more, and the banks tightening credit lines, investors of half-finished projects could only seek finance by issuing shares and bonds, Lu Zhengwei, Senior Economist at Industrial Bank, said. Zhu Jianfang, Chief Economist at Citic Securities, warned that slamming on the brakes abruptly was not desirable. “Too much and too fast a slowdown can be counterproductive,” he said. As for the size of next year’s credit supply, he said that contrary to the pessimistic forecasts – CNY6 trillion at the lowest – there would still be somewhere from CNY7.5 trillion to CNY8 trillion of new loans advanced to sustain GDP growth of about 8%.