In 2015 and early 2016 the British news media blamed almost every economic problem on the Chinese slowdown. Falling share prices, falling oil and steel prices and the weak rate of economic growth in the UK and USA — all the fault China. On 7 May 2016 The Economist ran an article headed ‘It is a question of when, not if, real trouble hits China’.
In fact, booming UK exports to China have been a huge boon to the UK economy. Figure 1 shows the slowdown in the rate of growth in China in 2015, but paints a much broader picture of economic success. In 1990 China was a minnow; today it is a whale. According to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), China now has a bigger economy than the USA at purchasing power parity (PPP).
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