While the U.S. consumer is officially deceased, Chinese consumers have just been born. Market “experts” were expecting Chinese consumer-spending to follow the example of debt-ridden Western economies – and collapse. These “experts” have been “surprised” (so what else is new?) that there has been no decline in Chinese consumption.

There has never been any such flawed analysis on this site (see “China a model for economic recovery” and “China to be first economy to recover”).

The real question here is how do these people justify thinking of themselves as “experts”??? There are three, HUGE differences between China's economy (and consumers) compared to anemic, Western economies.

1) Chinese people have a HUGE, pool of savings – as the Chinese people have always had one of the highest savings-rates in the world. Why would “experts” expect people with LOTS of money to stop spending?

2) China's economy has never stopped GROWING. Why would “experts” expect a dramatic weakening in China's consumer sector, with an economy growing by more than 5% per year? In a Western economy, that level of growth would reflect an absolutely BOOMING economy.

3) China's government ALSO has a huge surplus, meaning it was able to engage in rapid, massive stimulus of the economy – without going into debt. Why would “experts” not understand that China's economy would immediately rebound once this spending began filtering through the economy?

It seems that the people who compile dictionaries will have to come up with a new definition of “expert”: someone who knows absolutely nothing about their field of “expertise”. Of course, I'm being unfair here. Many of these “experts” are not that stupid, rather they are paid liars whose sole purpose is to distribute fictional propaganda to the “sheep”.

In the West, we have been fed a steady diet of such propaganda. It was important (from a U.S. standpoint) to lie about China's economy, and pretend it was much weaker than reality – as yet another means of not making the U.S. collapse look less-severe from a relative perspective. The same sort of lying has taken place in the media regarding European economies.

Here is what is taking place in the real world. China 3C Group, a domestic giant in consumer electronics reported a 22% increase in 4^th quarter sales, according to an article in “China Confidential” (a subsidiary of the Financial Times).

Footwear retailer Belle reported a 19% monthly increase in sales, with the CEO bullishly proclaiming there is “ample room for growth”.