George Osborne just made a big bet on China's economy

British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is in China, and he's making a slightly risky move - weighing in with his opinion on Chinese growth.

The disputed reliability of the Chinese government's economic statistics and the state's partial control of industries makes the country's performance difficult to forecast, and there's a huge amount of disagreement among economists.

Here's what Osborne said to a meeting of Chinese technology executives on Sunday, according to Reuters.

"China is going through a very necessary and challenging transformation which is essential so that China's economy can go on creating good careers and good jobs and higher living standards for your 1.3 billion people," he said at the start of a five-day trip to China.

"I think the message I would say to China is, carry on with the reform, carry on with the change you're making...

"And if you look at the broader picture in China, even if it's not growing at double digits the way that it once did it is still creating an economy at least the size of the United Kingdom in the next five years. So it's a massive source of global growth going forward."

Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron have been extremely friendly with Chinese authorities, fighting off countries like Germany and France to win the first renminbi clearing bank outside of Asia.

He's still banging that drum. He says he wants to make Britain China's "best partner in the west," according to the Guardian.

Other economists are more downbeat about the potential for China. Here's Michael Pettis, one of the economists who's been forecasting a considerable slowdown in China for quite some time, writing in the Wall Street Journal in July:

China's GDP growth will almost certainly continue to decline by more than consensus expectations, and debt will continue to rise faster. But so long as Beijing's credibility remains very high, China will nonetheless be protected from the risk of financial crisis. This credibility allows China to manage a financial system designed for credit expansion that has left the country with what would otherwise be an extraordinarily vulnerable balance sheet.

Policy makers must ensure that protecting Beijing's credibility is a priority. Many countries have taken their credibility for granted during the growth phase, only to see it erode and even collapse during the subsequent adjustment as regulators, underestimating how difficult it would be, overextended themselves in the early stages of adjustment.

In short, China probably isn't going to slam into a brick wall or plunge into a catastrophic recession - though there's a risk that Beijing's credibility ebbs - and the years of western politicians trying to get a share of double-digit growth figures are over.

Osborne might look pretty clever in a few years, or he might come to regret making a bet on China.

Capital Economics noted recently that while the UK's trade links with China are pretty feeble in comparison to the eurozone, US or Australia, in terms of its banking links, there's a lot more exposure: