Today we learned that – China posts slowest GDP growth in two years – yes, the annual rate of growth has dropped to 9.1 per cent which was 0.4 per cent lower than the second-quarter and 0.2 per cent lower than the estimate provided by the Bloomberg News survey of 22 economists. The reason given for the “slowdown” was “monetary tightening and weaker export demand”. The anticipation of a slowdown over the last week has fuelled a host of doomsday projections about how the Chinese investment boom will crash and how it will cripple the rest of the world. My view is different. I consider the Chinese government to be totally on top of managing their economy, which sets them apart from the leaders in the advanced world. They will not let a major economic crisis occurring within their own borders. They have so much more scope to expand although all of us will rue the environment impacts of that expansion. Their problems are going to political – taming an increasingly rowdy middle class. For the rest of us, China provides an economic example – when all other sources of expenditure fail, turn on public spending and do it quickly and don’t err on the conservative side.