Is the party over in China? Massive unemployment looms

China watchers are predicting a drop in the GNP growth rate this year and for the foreseeable future. Most are attributing the expected fall off this year — from last year’s official 11.4 percent, the fifth year in a row of double digit expansion — to the expected downturn in the U.S. and the world economy in general.

A group of unemployed Chinese migrant workers take a nap in the shade of a building.      
Even the 2007 growth rate wasn’t that high when compared with the peaks of the 1980s and 1990s, when GDP growth in some years surpassed 15 percent, coming out of the stagnation and even losses at the end of the Maoist era.

The downturn is going to be welcomed in some Chinese leadership quarters because of the fear of runaway inflation from an overheated economy — now fed by food shortages and the impact of the worst winter in 50 years.