CHINA seems to be entering a period of moderate growth, and moderate inflation. That's deeply unsettling for a nation that has become accustomed to panegyrics.

Mind you, the epithet "moderate" could only be properly understood in the China context, against a decade of double-digit growth, in GDP (and some prices).

So the case for economic adjustment gives way to the urgency of stabilizing growth.

The holy grail of growth reminds us of the "efficiency" that once inspired the whole nation when the market-oriented reform was kicked off more than 30 years ago.

Efficiency was so enshrined at the time that millions of state-owned enterprise (SOE) employees were persuaded to give up their jobs to help cut redundancies.

Today a job with a big SOE is one of the most sought after. The senior management of some SOE banks can enjoy compensation and perks that would likely be the envy of investment bankers in the West. Unlike investment bankers, SOE bankers never worry about their profits.

So when we reminisce today about the good old days when efficiency was first idealized, we sense something missing in our enthusiasm: efficient for whom, and at whose costs?

Business as priority

Some experts explain that China owes much of its productive efficiency today to the single-minded pursuit of GDP on the part of local governments.

As a matter of fact, when told that development of the economy is the No. 1 political goal, many local government officials willingly become the handmaidens of business, and have little incentive to pay much attention to such irrelevancies as justice, rule of law, or public welfare.

The accelerating concentration of wealth in the hands of few, the long neglect of public services, and the worsening environment all cry out for the long-deferred structural adjustment.

The trouble is that, given our political addiction to growth, structural adjustment can only be safely flirted with in times of roaring growth.

As veteran journalist Hu Shuli observed in a recent issue of Century Weekly magazine, "the old-style growth mode invariably gets a new lease on life with some ornamental changes, because this growth mode has a solid, systematic basis that cannot be shaken by mere lip service."

In the existing political framework, grassroots officials have every incentive to, within their three or five years' tenure, to initiate government-spearheaded investment as a short cut to impress those who can promote them, Hu observed.

We are not alone in having this growth problem.

In her "The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters" (2011, Princeton University Press), author Diane Coyle believes the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 signaled fundamental economic problems in the capitalist world.

While Western economies are struggling with several widespread, long-term issues, including climate change, an aging population, a heavy debt burden and social inequality, the current measures don't account for the impact economic growth has on the environment or on future generations.

"At present we lack the analysis and the institutions needed for addressing the seemingly intractable economic and social challenges, and even more fundamentally the political framework for debating what to do," she observes.

As a matter of fact, in Western democratic systems these large-scale questions are irrelevant. In elections, notwithstanding the show of bitter partisanship and ideological differences, the standard approach has always been to maintain the status quo. Even if the status quo has been proved to be unsustainable, the priority for policy makers is to sustain it for as long as possible.

In the United States this can be achieved by borrowing generously from others to finance an extravagant way of life that is disastrous to this and the next generation.

But the United States gets nearly all it wants by eagerly spreading the gospel of prosperity to every corner of the earth.

Benjamin Barber once observed, "There are epic moments in history, often catalyzed by catastrophe, that permit fundamental political change ... Today we find ourselves in another such seminal moment. Will we use it to rethink the meaning of capitalism?"

We have reason to be cynical, given the systematic paralysis.

Happiness

That paralysis stems from the conception of human happiness as solely dependent on the accessibility of an ever-increasing array of goods and services, known as "standard of living."

Today the Chinese people's choice and control of commodities could not have been imagined 30 years ago, but some are nostalgic about the time when there were no ads, few stores, and a lot of leisure.

Many think fondly of the flowering of literary creation around the 1980s.

That was definitely not a time of plenty. My family waited several years to get our first bicycle, through rationing.

But for me the satisfaction of having one far surpassed that felt by Americans in having another car.

Whether emotionally or materially, instant gratification is the sure way to spoil the appreciation.

Sadly, the GDP metrics are manifestly inadequate in measuring our contentment, as we find that the things we most value in our life simply cannot be measured in monetary terms.

GDP metrics even fail to fully measure "products," when we realize that they do not take into account such external factors as pollution created during the production, or the pollution and poison given off in the consumption of commodities.

But the author is ambivalent about growth.

"Whenever the economy is in a recession, a wave of books and feature articles will discover the joys of a simpler, less acquisitive lifestyle," writes the author, satirically.

This essentially flawed conception prevents her from identifying the true malaise of capitalism.

To sum up, her proposal about how to bring about a better balance between the present and the future is seriously limited by her assessment of the Western way of life, to which she is so attached.