CHANGCHUN/LONDON — Is China the economic locomotive that will lift the world back onto the growth path and help eradicate its vast debts?
Certainly China's performance over the past year has been amazing, if the figures are to believed. Sustained by a huge expansion of bank credit, the country is registering year-on-year growth of almost 8 percent, with still higher levels expected next year.
Of course, China, as a vast exporter of consumer goods to the West and the Middle East, has been not unscathed by the global collapse. But pictures of closed factories, bankrupt manufacturers, deserted towns, and tens of millions out of work and going back to the countryside certainly contrast with those of a major inland city like Changchun, the center of China's nascent motor industry.