ABSTRACT
The statement that China has rapidly emerged as a large and influential force in
the global economy will be universally regarded as a hoary cliché. From being a
completely peripheral economy three decades ago, it has emerged to be the
second largest economy in the world by mid-2010. In 2009, China was the largest
trader and largest energy consumer in the world.1 Although in 2010 the US
continued to hold the top spot in manufacturing output, it was poised to relinquish
this distinguished status to China in 2011 (Marsh, 2010). This will end a 110-year
run of the US being number one nation in factory production.2 China has
been the largest creditor economy for some time, and its credit rating agency,
Dagong Global Credit Rating, employs fairly different norms from those utilized
by Standard and Poor’s, or Moody’s and Fitch, in assessing the creditworthiness
of sovereign countries. In 2009, China had the fifth greatest number of patents
applications filed. China filed 7,946 applications compared to 761 by India.
