China to impact on global expansion

China is finally having the economic impact its backers have long predicted.

The country’s boom accounted for almost one-sixth of worldwide economic growth last year. Now that its economy is slowing, the world’s most populous country may curb global expansion.

Premier Wen Jiabao’s effort to cool China’s growth rate to about 7% from last year’s 9.1% may trim global growth by half a percentage point in 2005 and Asia’s expansion by a full percentage point, said Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York.