In 2008, after the western financial crisis, it was predicted that China's economy would falter, as 22% of China's exports went to the EU and 15% to the US. A drop in economic growth to less than 8% was forecast.
In fact, the economy grew 9.6% in 2008, 9.1% in 2009, 10.6% in 2010, 9.6% in 2011, 7.8% in 2012. Moody's predicts 7.8 to 8.5% for 2013.
This was caused by internal investment of $560bn in 2009/10, leading to huge developments in health, education and infrastructure. In one year, national educational expenditure rose by 45%. The Chinese government reacted to the crisis by building things, not giving money to banks.
Steve Elsworth
Weymouth, Dorset
• The downgrade of British government bonds is partly a reflection of the nervousness of investors because the British government, having remained outside the euro, enjoys greater sovereignty in the conduct of economic policy. Greater sovereignty comes with the ability to devalue the currency to gain international competitiveness and the ability to monetise the debt through the Bank of England. Greater sovereignty thus carries the danger, in the eyes of investors, that the value of the stock of debt might be inflated away in some disorderly fashion if the current policies, which appear to conflate deficit reduction with effective debt management, are recognised too late by government as unsustainable.
SP Chakravarty
Bangor
• If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. The chancellor can't admit that his economic policy has been a car crash. When the Tories took over government with the Lib Dems in tow, they had a worldwide economic crisis to act as a smokescreen for them to do what they would have wanted to do anyway: shrink the state and its influence for the benefit of the few.
We might have hoped that the loss of the prized AAA rating would lead to a rethink but George Osborne says more of the same, only more so, is what is needed. At a time when Lincoln is in the news the Tories have their own Gettysburg address: Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But it won't win George an Oscar.
Alan Healey
Milson, Shropshire
• I remember Denis Healey's return from the airport and the IMF in 1976. I remember the screaming headlines, and the indignant opposition at the fall of the last redoubt of a collapsing orthodoxy. Where are they now? These are defining times, but not by our media, who offer us tepid talk from Cable, or the official opposition, who offer us nothing at all.
Michael Ball
London
• The downgrading of the UK's AAA credit rating, and the inevitable fall in the value of sterling, has torpedoed one of the key arguments against Scottish independence. We have for years been told of the merits of being in the UK because of its credit rating, but this bubble has been burst with the warning by Moody's that growth will remain "sluggish" over the next few years, and the risk of slipping back into recession for the third time.
Contrast this with the news that investment in North Sea oil and gas is at a 30-year high, with companies looking for offshore energy investing £11.4bn in 2012. The number of projects given development approval by the Department of Energy and Climate Change almost doubled between 2011 and 2012, and there are still 24bn barrels of oil to be recovered, with an estimated wholesale value of £1.5tn.
Scotland is shackled within a UK that is gobbling up our black gold to fill a black hole in the Treasury, and until we in Scotland have the confidence to control our own affairs we have only ourselves to blame for this depressing situation.
Alex Orr
Edinburgh
• For all the scorn the Tories and Lib Dems have heaped on the economic management of the last Labour government, back in those days Britain had a AAA credit rating.
Cllr Pete Ruhemann
Reading, Berkshire
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