From the Globe and Mail: The World Bank has come up with a new way to look at the relative clout of economies, and it turns out most previous estimates have exaggerated the size of China’s and India’s economies by roughly 40 per cent. The new, and smaller, China still ranks behind the United States […]

From The New York Times: Many economists have long suspected that official government statistics were a slighter shadow of reality. With China’s announcement on Monday that its economy was far bigger than previously estimated, economists and financial prognosticators are scrambling to rethink their assessment of China’s rise and its role on the world stage. China’s […]

From AP, via the Washington Post: China should keep up its strong economic expansion over the next five years, with annual growth of 8 percent driven by abundant labor and a big domestic market, the government said Thursday. The projected growth is below the 9.5 percent reported for 2004 – the country’s fastest expansion in […]

From Xinhuanet: Expecting another year of grain yield shortfall, China will make efforts to fill the gap by enhancing the productivity of its farmland and increasing grain import, a financial official said Monday. Chen Xiwen, deputy director of the Office of the Central Financial Work Leading Group, said at a press conference in Beijing that […]

From Economist.com: China’s economy re-accelerated in the last quarter of 2004, despite official efforts to curb rampant investment. Is it growing too fast to keep its balance? On Tuesday, January 25th, the Chinese authorities sheepishly confessed that the economy beat expectations last year, growing by 9.5%. It finished the year particularly strongly, growing at an […]

From TBO.com: “China’s economy expanded at its fastest pace in eight years in 2004, growing at an annual rate of 9.5 percent despite efforts to slow its blistering pace in order to avert inflation, the government said Tuesday. The figures exceeded economists’ forecasts and were well above the official target of 8 percent.” Australia’s Herald […]

This is an editorial article in LA Times today: “China’s struggle to slow — without crashing — its overheated economy is of vital interest well beyond the Great Wall. The economic boom is evident in the hundreds of construction cranes towering over Shanghai and in commodity prices worldwide that have been driven higher by China’s […]

From The Observer, Heather Stewart wrote: ‘China is a sleeping giant. And when she awakes, she shall astonish the world.’ The truth of Napoleon’s warning, made more than two centuries ago, is beginning to resonate in the world’s richest nations. When oil prices shot up above $50 a barrel earlier this year, it was the […]

From UPI, via the World Peace Herald: “The economic data China reported in October pointed to an economy settling to a sustainable pace. Inflation has been easing, even though it is still too early to say the inflation cycle in China has peaked.”