Word: growth
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...reason for their angst is clear enough: throughout 2009, the most severe global downturn in decades, China's economic growth remained intact. This year, China's GDP will likely rise 9% or more, in contrast to a merely subpar recovery in the U.S. and Europe. For thousands of companies across the globe, anything that threatens China's buoyancy threatens their own bottom lines. (Witness the sell-off in the S&P 500 on Feb. 12, when Beijing's central bank raised by a tick the so-called reserve ratio requirement for its banks.) And nothing, not even massive government infrastructure...
...Last year, total fixed-asset investment accounted for more than 90% of China's overall growth; residential and commercial real estate investment comprised nearly a quarter of that. Toss in the not insignificant fact that it was a huge real estate bust in the U.S. that dumped the world into recession in the first place, and many analysts are now beginning to fear the worst. "China's property market," says independent Shanghai economist Andy Xie, "is a massive bubble." (See TIME's photo-essay "The Making of Modern China...
...Since the start of the year, it has become clear that such concerns are shared by the central government in Beijing, which is seeking to tighten credit growth generally, and property loans in particular. The latest budget report from the Ministry of Finance, released to coincide with the opening of the National People's Congress in Beijing on March 5, draws attention to debt levels being incurred by local governments forging headlong into massive infrastructural and development projects. Even as it was being distributed, Premier Wen Jiabao was telling NPC delegates that the authorities would slow both lending...
...China, the annual sandstorms have been exacerbated by desertification. Agricultural expansion, overgrazing and population growth starting in the 1950s strained already dry regions in western China. By 2004, 27% of the country's landmass suffered from some degree of desertification, according to the Chinese Meteorological Administration. China has invested heavily in planting trees and small shrubs over former croplands to prevent the spread of arid land eastward. The government has reported the rate of desertification has slowed after 2000, but says climate change and other environmental pressures means more than 186,000 square miles (300,000 sq km) of land...
...points to fledgling "cross-Latin investment" as a key trend that the organization could further. "Even three or four years ago, Latin American businesses were nervous about investing in each other's countries," Segal notes. "Now they see they need to cross each other's borders" to create enough growth to compete with blocs like...