According to data from the World Bank, in the five years before 2022, China’s economy grew by 7 percent annually in U.S. dollar terms, accounting for an extraordinary 29 percent of global growth. Now, with China’s economy slowing rapidly, many analysts around the world worry that a continued contraction in Chinese growth could potentially have an adverse global impact. Without China acting as the global engine of growth, they say, growth around the world could stall. To begin with, it is a mistake—albeit a very common one—to refer to China as the global engine of growth. And because trade surpluses go hand-in-hand with capital outflows, these trade surpluses also make China the world’s largest net exporter of capital.
