Doom and Gloom

Thomas Chow takes the press to task for hyperbolic language on the Chinese economy. Some good stuff here. It’s easy to write a story about a tanking stock market and extrapolate about the nature of the economy as a whole. But it just isn’t accurate, and 10% growth, as Thomas rightly points out, ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

So now what? Is this a bandwagon idea or is the economy really about to tank? Somehow I doubt its the latter. I will not play Chicken Little and say the Chinese economy is about to keel over and die. Just because the stock market bubble burst and people can no longer play cards around the stock exchange, does this mean China is in dire circumstances? No way. Even with an inflated figure of 10% growth, China’s economy has far more resistance than what all of the doom-and-gloom media outlets have been saying.

Some estimates are going down to 8%. Still is tremendous growth, although if we see a drop like that from one year to the next, it will definitely be indicative of some serious dislocations. On the whole, however, I’m tired of the doomsayers as well.


1 Comment

  1. Stan, Chris Devonshire said the same after meeting with the Indian FM last week. China apparently would slow down maybe a percentage point as would India, with the IFM saying “Even with a slow down, being the 2nd fastest growing economy in the world is still satisfactory”. Good stuff. Here: http://www.2point6billion.com/2008/03/26/does-india-have-built-in-resilience-over-us-downturn-concerns/