HONG KONG — Is the world economy about to enter the second part of a double dip, or is it merely bumping along the extended bottom of what will eventually be a U-shaped recovery, or is it a long L with no real upturn in sight? Or is there no clear pattern of who's up and who's down?
Economic pundits in the West don't seem to know, and in Asia few people seem to care because economic growth is still going gangbusters, except in Japan.
News this month that China has finally passed Japan as the world's second biggest economy in dollar terms got more publicity than it deserved. In the real world of what you get for your money (purchasing power parity), China has been bigger than Japan for some time and is now twice as big.