China at an inflection point: what's in it for Asia?

CHINA'S size and promise have long enthralled the world. The dream of penetrating China's market was colourfully captured in the words of a British commentator in the 1840s: "If we could only persuade every person in China to lengthen his shirt-tail by a foot, we could keep the mills of Lancashire working around the clock." Well, war, revolution, and central planning quickly laid to rest that fantasy.

Since the closing decades of the last century, the gravity-defying growth and transformation of the Chinese economy have once again stirred global imagination. Its gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 10 per cent per annum between 1980 and 2010, ahead of virtually all other economies.

China's size, growth, and rapid integration with the rest of the world mean that no evaluation of the global economy can be complete without looking at Chi…