The World Bank cut its forecast for China’s 2012 economic growth to 8.2 percent on Thursday and said a rebound might not begin before the third quarter of the year as slack foreign demand and a government-induced real estate slowdown restrain a recovery.

“There is the potential for growth to be bumping along the bottom for longer,” Ardo Hansson, the World Bank’s lead economist for China, told a news conference to release the multilateral lender’s quarterly update on China.

The Bank’s new growth forecast for the world’s second-biggest economy would mark a 13-year low, compared with an 8.4 percent, 11-year-low estimate in November 2011.

An 8.2 percent expansion would mean China’s economy was growing slightly below its potential rate, Hansson said. In economic terms, it implies Beijing has space to tweak policies to boost growth without igniting inflation.

“We see cyclical weakness continuing, but that the prospects for a soft…