Another year with double digit growth predicted in China

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) just released a report where they predict that China's economy will grow by more that 10% during 2008 and that is slight slowdown compared with 2007 (over 11%).

It is easy to agree with the following statement from t a recent report from the World Bank.

“China is now the world's fourth largest economy and growing very fast. India's economic salience is also on the rise. Together these two countries will profoundly influence the pace and nature of global economic change”

Dancing with Giants: China, India, and the Global Economy, World Bank, 2007

Hopefully 2008 will see two major shifts in OECD countries (governments and companies) relation to Chinas development:

1. That Chinas development will be seen and used as an opportunity to develop global solutions that can provide high quality of life with little use of natural resources.

2. That we drop GDP as a tool to assess welfare and how successful a country is and let it be what it can be (e.g. an indicator to help us address inflation/stagnation in the industrial part of the economy).