To preface this post: this is my opinion and I am not going to take the time to list any evidence for what I am saying here (blogs, especially unread ones, don't need "sources").
I'll have some time during this coming week to make some more posts of substance.
To answer Leo's question, I don't think that the rate of growth will be significantly slower (depending on your definition of significant) this year than the past few.
But the slowdown in the US and Europe is being felt over here nonetheless. It doesn't seem to have brought on much of the doom and gloom I've been reading in the US press, but it has had an impact.
Also, the declining dollar has hurt the economy over here, as China holds more foreign exchange reserves, mostly dollars, than any other country, so the government's assets have declined in value. The Yuan is linked on a floating peg to the dollar, so inflation has been exacerbated by problems in the US. This has mainly hurt the less well off in China, as staples have increased in price at a quite high rate.
It seems I'm rambling, so to sum it up, I feel that in the short term, the rate of growth will be slightly slowed. This is actually a good thing, as the worry is that it will overheat if it just keeps growing at the present rate, creating a massive bubble and unchecked inflation.
Long term it seems that there are some internal problems (eg, income disparity and environmental problems) that could pose more of a threat to continued economic growth than what I think will turn out to be a short 'recession' in the US.
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Thanks for the report. It will be interesting to see how the "Games" are reported on and how things are portrayed. I've seen other videos of Bejing etc and cities the sky always seems "gray" how does the pollution compare with Chicago as you are used to?
Hey Uncle Leo, I too am interested to see how the games will be reported. Though I will be watching the Chinese broadcasts most of the time out of necessity, one of my friends has satellite, so I hope to catch some events on western networks.
As far as the air quality goes, there is no comparing Beijing, Shanghai, or most of the large cities here, to Chicago. Most of the expats I know that have lived here for a while only compare Chinese cities' air quality with that of other Chinese cities, because it is so disheartening to compare it to most of our hometowns.
Shanghai's air in my experience, is a good deal cleaner than Beijing's. Beijing's pollution problems are exacerbated by the fine dust of the Loess plateau, which can make things absolutely unbearable at some times of the year.
The best anecdotal way to judge the air quality in Beijing that I know is whether or not the western hills are visible from the central urban area. In my 6+ total weeks in Beijing, I think I can remember at most 3 days in which I could see the hills. According to Time's China blog, the hills were visible yesterday, so the air quality would conceivably be much better than usual in the last days before the Opening Ceremony.
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