apparently you did not get my point: at present levels of industrialisation (3-4m new urban jobs per year) it would take china 100 more years to become developed, bar population growth. with annual wages of less than $2,000 per worker, it would take quite a few years to measure up to the BR in BRIC.
and given those paltry incomes, for how long retail sales will continue growing at 23% vs 14% for incomes? or maybe the sales growth is all due to food inflation which consumes 70% (guestimate) of the income.
ahhhhh, and the bigest ifs of all: when exports slow, what will the impact be on the present employment picture?
get real. china is still a feud with communists running it. if the economy is hit by this crisis, there will be revolution there.

they make great products, but their economy is just as lopsided as the u.s.’s is and dont expect when the rich suffers, the servant to get by easier.

anon 6;08,,,yes, jobs are created in the process of industrializing but industrialization tends towards higher capital to labor ratios which is to say _relative_ diminishment of employment opportunities even as those requiring employment has very likely been rising.

Late development can transform from benefit to curse.

baychev, I am not sure if you are stupid or just ignorant. Every country start out from a large rural population toward a urban population. Jobs get created in the industrialization process. Is that Rome for 300-400 jobs? Well, Rome isn’t built in a day.

the gov’t is ripping off its people and amassing huge currency reserves that ironically amount to $1,500 per capita. is that really sufficient to prop up domestic consumption when the external markets shut down due to their own economic woes? i would guess you are native a big net european exporter. when europe’s exports to the usa go down, consumption of chinese goods by those factory workers dries up quickly.
just becuase there is room for improvement does not mean that the country is self sufficient. it is not. it is heavily dependent on exports to the usa/eu and its destiny is closely tied to the health of its customers.

When China feels the need to ’stimulate’ its economy, then you have a sign the world has truly gone mad.

http://stefanmikarlsson.blogspot.com/2008/10/chinese-growth-declines.html

Sure, export growth will slow substantially. It already does. Look at container rates. They are giving them away.

However:

- Retail sales in China rose 23.2 percent in September from a year earlier, matching the gain in August and close to the fastest pace in at least nine years.

- Urban disposable incomes for the first nine months rose 14.7 percent to 11,865 yuan from a year earlier. Rural cash incomes climbed 19.6 percent to 3,971 yuan.

- The formerly red-hot Chinese light vehicle market (which includes passenger vehicle and light commercial vehicle segments) is expected to slow in 2008, but it still will grow at very healthy rates. J.D. Power expects Chinese light vehicle sales to come in at 8.9 million units in 2008, which would be an increase of 9.7 % compared to 2007.

- Much of the decline in exports had been caused by the appreciation of the RMB, which was actually a reflection of the rapid depreciation of the USD which took place until July 2008. As gasgoo.com said, "For most local auto parts makers, the impact on exports brought by the demand slowdown of the global market triggered by the financial crisis will be less than that of the RMB appreciation."

If anybody has noticed, the USD, and especially the Yen took a sharp turn and appreciated dramatically since July. Now is this reflected in the USD/CNY currency pair? Have a look at the chart: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=USDCNY=X&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=usdeur=X Until July, the Yuan pretty much appreciated against the USD as the Euro.

When the USD started raising like mad starting in July, the USD/CNY rate barely budged. The EUR/CNY rate moved.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=1y&s=EURCNY%3DX&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=USDCNY%3DX%2C

The only misguided sentence in the Bloomberg report is "The central bank has stalled gains by the yuan against the dollar since mid-July, protecting jobs in export industries." Jeez, they did the opposite. When the Yuan should have gone down against the USD along with the other currencies (except the Yen, but that's a different story) the Yuan barely moved. The Chinese central bank propped up the yuan against the US dollar.

Expect this to change radically within the next months, latest after the U.S. elections. We expect the yuan to drop against the USD, the easiest way for the Chinese government to make Chinese exports more attractive. In the first half of 2008, this would have been a rather unpopular move. But now, the world has other problems than watching the CNY/USD currency pair. And when the USD will drop as America cranks up the presses to print money to finance the bailout and two wars, the Chinese can keep the CNY/USD level, and make their goods even cheaper in Euro terms.

China is the country that keeps the world economy alive. The Chinese have the incentive and wherewithal to keep it that way. They have nearly unlimited room to grow, while Western market are saturated and while especially European and Japanese demographics indicate shrinking markets. Out of this recession, China will emerge stronger than ever.