For instance car sales expanded by an awesome 56% last year to 1.1 million units - but this is small beer for a country with a population of 1.3 billion. China is firing on all cylinders：retail sales are rising by around 10%，exports are booming and foreign direct investment is up by 57% to 13bn (?8.25bn).
The interesting thing is that China is now a much more open economy than it was，thanks mainly to its membership of the World Trade Organisation and the tariff cuts that have gone with it.
Although exports have been growing by comfortably over 20% during the past few years，imports have soared at an annual rate of over 40% in the latest half-year. This makes China one of the few big economies helping to boost world trade in a positive manner.
It ought also to be mildly reassuring to the rest of the world. There are - very real - fears that China could acquire a stranglehold on the world"s manufacturing capacity because of its formidable combination of high skills and low labour costs.
The lesson of this year"s figures is that the more prosperous China becomes the more it wants to buy goods and services from the rest of the world. The health of east Asia"s economy used to be a function of the state of the US to which it supplies so many final goods and components.
That is still true to an extent. But China has now emerged as a dynamic economy in its own right capable of energising the entire Pacific Rim. It won"t be long before western countries start looking to China，as they have to the US，Europe and Japan，to become the locomotive of world recovery. With the rest of the world economy in the state it is in，that moment can"t happen too soon.
（2）The Daily Telegraph：Economic Agenda. July 3，2003，Thursday (Filed：May 11，2003). “Don’t panic about the economic cost of ”by Roger Bootle.
Don"t panic about the economic cost of Sars
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome，or Sars，has caused many deaths and much distress across the world. But it has caused even more alarm than pain. There is a suggestion that its economic effects may even bring on a world recession. Even though Sars has not affected the health of many Western commentators，it may have affected their judgment.
The facts
First，we need to be clear about the scale of the problem. The World Health Organisation (WHO) considers that the Sars outbreak began in November 2002. So far，nearly 7，000 cases have been reported worldwide；of these，fewer than 500 have resulted in death.
China and Hong Kong together account for almost 90 per cent of all known cases and more than 85 per cent of all Sars deaths so far.
Even in these countries，Sars has infected tiny proportions of the population - 0.0003 per cent of China"s 1.3bn people and 0.02 per cent of Hong Kong"s 7m.
Nevertheless，there have clearly been some major economic effects in Asia，notably on the travel business. By early April，US airlines were reporting an 80 per cent drop in bookings to Asia. And there have been some headlinegrabbing cancellations. The Rolling Stones have cancelled the Hong Kong leg of their latest tour and scrapped their debut in China，scheduled for early April. Santana"s Asian tour has also been called off.
Moreover，potential consumers are staying at home rather than eating in restaurants and shopping. In Hong Kong，retail sales fell by 12.5 per cent year-on-year in February. The April decline could be as high as 15 to 20 per cent.
Figures show a steady drop in tourist arrivals in Hong Kong，from 1.7m in December to 1.4m in February. The Hong Kong purchasing managers" index (PMI) recently signalled the sharpest contraction in the survey"s brief history.
At face value，it points to a 7 per cent drop in GDP. In Singapore too，the impact is manifest. Tourist arrivals have been falling - but manufacturing came close to expanding again in April after contracting in March，according to this week"s PMI.
Outside Asia，Sars has been most prevalent in Canada. In Toronto，officials said recently that the number of cases there was subsiding and an earlier warning by the WHO to travellers to stay away has been lifted. However，this advice hurt the travel and tourism sector，reducing demand for aircraft seats and hotel rooms，and hitting retail sales. The Bank of Canada has already warned that second quarter GDP growth will be reduced as a result of these problems.
Perspective and offsets
There is clearly a chance that Sars will spread outside the main infected areas and that alarm about the risks could so affect people"s behaviour that recessionary forces would be stoked up across the world.
Sometimes non-economic events like diseases do have serious，and even catastrophic，consequences. The Black Death，which killed about a third of Europeans in the 14th century，transformed the European economy. In the last century，the outbreak of Spanish flu just after the First World War killed 50 million people，far more than died in the fighting itself. That was both a human and economic catastrophe.
But on the evidence so far，an alarming spread to the West，and even an intensification of the rate of infection in China and Hong Kong，look unlikely. I suspect that Sars will prove to be another of those non-economic events which are supposed to knock the economy for six and in the end prove to have little lasting influence. Perhaps the most spectacular recent international example was the Millennium Bug. Remember that?
We had recent experience of something similar in the UK with the foot and mouth crisis. Clearly，some people were devastated by these awful events but the overall economic impact did not live up to its billing. The effect，which some excitable commentators thought might be as large as 2 percent of GDP，was probably more like 0.3 per cent. I reckon that the effect of Sars on the world economy will also turn out to be minor - and for broadly similar reasons.
