China’s 6.5% surge in the last quarter of 2020 epically trolled outgoing US President Donald Trump in the final three days of his presidency.
As the US economy slows amid exploding Covid-19 infections, China is surging in the other direction – and leading the globe in the process. In fact, China in 2021 will play the “oasis of prosperity” role that the US did in the late 1990s during the Asian financial crisis.
The phrase was Alan Greenspan’s. In September 1998, the then-Federal Reserve chairman detailed – correctly, as it turned out – how the US would be the sole growth engine for the foreseeable future.
This, remember, was the traumatic year after Thailand’s devaluation unleashed a wave of financial instability across the region. It toppled the economies of Indonesia and South Korea, pushed Japan’s banking system to the brink and slammed China.
