Surely, imitation will someday impinge on superior US growth performance as well.

But policymakers continued to benchmark recovery prospects to pre crisis growth performance.

With a low growth ceiling, strong economic performance generates inflationary pressures at a relatively early stage in the growth process.

This is a significant effect, even by the standards of China s superlative growth performance.

However, consistent growth in physical investment is expected to improve its 2005 performance moderately.

Moreover, slow growth in the advanced economies need not exert a drag on developing countries performance.

While projections of China s future growth vary, all predict weaker economic performance in the short term and even lower growth rates in the long term.

In principle, low post crisis growth in the advanced countries need not impede poor countries economic performance.

Moreover, its economic performance has been relatively sluggish, with a growth rate of just 2.3 last year.

The global economy demonstrated strong growth in 2004, due in part to the performance of developing countries, which experienced the highest growth rates in over 30 years.

Although growth has indeed been significantly above trend in recent years, performance over the entire decade was unimpressive.

Farther to the west, US economic performance is weakening, with first quarter growth a miserly 1.9 well below potential.

Given this, China s leaders have decided to stop using GDP growth as the primary criterion for evaluating officials performance.

In fact, the successful economies superlative growth performance has been enabled by other countries choice not to emulate them.

The Chinese economy s performance has thus maintained the cyclical pattern familiar from the past two decades rapid investment growth, supported by expansionary policy, drives up the economic growth rate.

Even in the United States, economic performance has remained mediocre, with growth hovering around 1.5 for the last few quarters.

In response, China s export performance swung from 26 annual growth in July 2008 to a 27 contraction by February 2009.

Recent economic data in China, India, Brazil, and Turkey point to the weakest growth performance in these countries in years.

But the weakness of manufacturing is a drag on India s overall economic performance and threatens the sustainability of its growth.

Historically, agriculture has driven economic performance in many countries, generating growth that has been shown to be at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other sectors.

And the increasingly heavy influence of political factors on market performance will likely weigh on global growth for years to come.

In the last decade, GDP growth soared, but most indices of social justice, governance performance, and public welfare deteriorated. Macroeconomic imbalances worsened as economic growth became excessively dependent on investment and exports.

The damage to Russia s economic growth prospects from the Yukos affair may yet prove temporary, barring a repeat performance with other companies.

Moreover, such a slowdown would devastate the developing world, as weaker performance in the advanced economies reduces the growth of export markets.

Apart from that, Japanese economic performance is set to remain weak, because the non tradable side is not a strong growth engine.

These case studies will examine country specific productivity experience and provide an interpretation against the backdrop of these countries' overall growth performance.

Although Africa has recorded a marked improvement in its recent economic performance, its growth rate still falls short of the target growth rate of 7 per cent per annum necessary to attain the MDGs.

Meanwhile, the lack of bank capital will continue, weighing heavily the European economy s short run performance and undermining its longer term growth potential.

They buttress their argument with empirical work that suggests that growth in developing countries has become progressively more dependent on China s economic performance.

With many of the global economy s traditional growth engines like the United States stuck in low gear, China s performance has become increasingly important.

Cutting growth rates by 40 70 is surely a recipe for stagnant societies with insufficient growth to satisfy private wants and public needs. Moreover, such a slowdown would devastate the developing world, as weaker performance in the advanced economies reduces the growth of export markets.

China, whose growth performance since 1970 has now broken every record, is well on its way to having the world s most unequal income distribution.

With growth returning to pre 2008 breakout levels, the performance of China, India, and Brazil is an important engine of expansion for today s global economy.

Once foreign investment and higher commodity export prices are excluded from the growth calculations, Latin America s recent economic performance barely exceeds its unexceptional historical average.

Moreover, overall economic performance in Brazil masks an important fact growth rates have been substantially higher among the country s poorer citizens, and unemployment is declining.

But the 8 real GDP growth recorded in 2004 might encourage some to expect a surge in economic performance, as has occurred elsewhere in the world.

High oil prices are set to dampen economic performance in the rest of the world as well, although growth prospects look better than in the US.

But the political reality is that China s government favors rapid growth in the short run over the structural reforms needed to sustain long term economic performance.

Accordingly, on past performance, the steel sector would seem to hold interest for developing countries as one component in a mix of exports with growth potential.

As the emotions in Washington today suggest, the aversion to tax increases runs far deeper than concern about their effect on current economic performance and job growth.

The IMF economists ask how 50 countries fared during the recent world financial meltdown, with performance measured by economic growth in 2008 09 relative to 2003 2007.

He consistently blamed France s poor export performance on the strong euro, favoring a politically subservient ECB whose mandate should include economic growth as well as price stability.

One might be inclined to interpret this amazing emerging market performance as a consequence of the growth in the amount of real stuff that these economies produced.

6 Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, Analysis of Performance and Assessment of Growth and Productivity in the ESCWA Region, 2nd Issue (E ESCWA EAD 2004 2).

To reach the next stage of economic development, China needs a new growth model. Reliance on investment will not enable China to achieve stable, long term growth and prosperity on the contrary it may well inflict serious long term damage on economic performance.