As the two largest economies in the world, major adjustments in the US and China obviously have an important bearing on the state of the global economy. With the economic performance of both nations currently at major junctures - a revival in the US and a slowdown in China, many have been quick to conclude that these crosscurrents represent a fundamental and lasting shift in the post-crisis era.

Despite all the hype over the so-called US revival, the US economy remains on a weak recovery trajectory. After strong growth in the two middle quarters of 2014, the economy slipped back to a 2.2 percent rate in the fourth quarter and is growing at about the same weak pace in the first quarter of 2015.

This is a continuation of an anemic post-crisis recovery that will shortly celebrate its sixth anniversary. Since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, real GDP growth has averaged just 2.3 percent, annually, which is fully two percentage points weaker than the typical recovery path of around 4.3 percent. 

Job growth has picked up sharply in the past several months, but output growth has not. This underscores a very serious problem that is re-emerging in the US, a sharp slowdown in output per worker, or productivity growth. It will be very difficult for the US to reclaim its role as an engine of global growth under such pressure. 

Many are missing the most important dynamic now at work in driving the Chinese economy and its related policies. The slowdown in the Chinese economy is largely, but not completely, by design, reflecting a deliberate rebalancing to slower growing services and consumption.

At the same time, China's recent monetary policy actions are aimed at putting a floor on the slowdown at around 7 percent GDP growth. This is a challenging goal, to be sure, especially in a weak global climate. 

However, the combination of short-term monetary policy adjustments and the dramatic reforms of a pro-consumption rebalancing can hardly be judged as "incrementalism." To the contrary, China is focused both on strategic and tactical considerations in managing its economy.

Unlike the US and other Western economies, China has not used up the ammunition in either its monetary or fiscal policy arsenals. As such, it has considerable scope for further stimulus should circumstances require - options that should allow China to stay the course of its dramatic reforms and rebalancing.

But China's slowdown does have serious implications, such as a diminished contribution from manufacturing activity that traditionally draws heavy support from natural resources such as energy, base metals, and other industrial materials. That is creating stiff headwinds for the resource economies such as Australia, Canada, Russia, Brazil, New Zealand, and many African nations.

Yet there is an important silver lining to the shift from manufacturing to services that underpins China's pro-consumption rebalancing; the emergence of a new source of domestic demand that not only lays the foundation for more sustainable growth in China but also offers the same for a post-crisis, growth-starved world. 

The impressive growth of China's services sector is a key case in point. When enacted four years ago, the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) had the ambitious target of hoping to boost the services share of Chinese GDP from 43 percent in 2010 to 47 percent in 2015. Recent statistics reveal that services actually hit 48 percent of Chinese GDP in 2014.

If China continues to stay the course of rebalancing, its overall services sector could expand by some $12 trillion between now and 2025, which could open a new market to China's trading partners of between $4 and $6 trillion over the next decade. 

Consequently, far from being the threat that many surmise, China's services-led slowdown is actually an important opportunity for itself and the world.

Since Chinese services require about 30 percent more workers per unit of output than do manufacturing and construction, a rebalanced Chinese economy doesn't need to grow nearly as fast to maintain social stability. 

China, the US, and the rest of the world are certainly changing. But it seems wrong to conclude that this represents a fundamental shift in the position of the world's two most powerful growth engines.

The author is a member of the faculty of Yale University and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. He is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China (Yale University Press, 2014). opinion@globaltimes.com.cn