Actually with 20m leaving the countryside every year (and accelerating), China needs to build the equivalent of a "Sydney" just about every month. This is the kind of "size" issue that ppl in the west have a hard time getting their heads around - everything is short term in the west, everything is long term in China.
China can't slow down too much because the momentum is already in place, e.g. the pressures to improve their standard of living are immense. The USA is important to China of course, but the momentum will carry China until the US recovers, which would be say, a couple of years tops.
All we are seeing is a short term hiccup. When sanity returns (and I hope the US financial system has learnt some very hard lessons by then), this whole mess will all be only a horrible, distant memory.
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