-->Hi,

das bitte auch noch zu den Akten nehmen (ex NYT, Auszüge):

"China Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing
By KEITH BRADSHER

Published: May 7, 2004

HONG KONG, May 6 - After a decade with the economic throttle wide open, China is overheating, and the country's leaders are now grappling with ways to slow the breakneck growth without choking it off.

Being able to apply the economic brakes just right to achieve what is known as a soft landing after a spectacular boom is a difficult challenge for any country. It may be doubly so for Beijing's leadership, who are fairly new to the market economy game and who lack many of the finely honed policy tools available to central bankers in the West and Japan.

Indeed, economists are deeply split over whether a soft landing or a hard landing is more likely for China.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has sought to assure foreign investors that China is taking significant steps to achieve a soft landing. During a visit to Brussels on Thursday, he said that his government would pursue"forceful" measures to"reduce the speed" of the economy"but not a sudden braking." He promised to slow the swift increases in the money supply and in bank lending that have fueled the recent acceleration in growth, but said that a loosening of the peg of China's currency to the dollar would have to wait for banking reforms.

Much is riding on Beijing's efforts. The global recovery now depends on China as one of its twin engines, along with the United States.

A hard landing - a steep decline in economic growth leading to higher urban unemployment and a sharp drop in imports - would rattle economies across Asia and around the world.

But it would probably bear little resemblance to the last economic crisis in the region, the cascade of financial and currency collapses that swept through many East Asian economies (but not China) in 1997 and 1998, a memory still fresh and painful for many investors.

If China runs into serious trouble, experts say this would most likely take months to unfold rather than be a financial collapse that becomes apparent in a few weeks, as happened in Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea nearly seven years ago....

Growth of only 3 percent or 4 percent would feel like a serious economic slump, and zero growth or a contraction would be devastating, the experts say."

Na dann mal dorthin Gute Reise + hierhin: Gruß!