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The size of China's economy is overestimated by some 40 percent based on most current measures, but is the world's second largest, the World Bank said Monday.

"(The yuan) is not the key issue. Currently my focus is more on the depreciation of the US dollar and its possible impact and repercussions for the world economy," Chen told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

<p>Too many people have been worried about the wrong thing -- worried that China's growth is somehow going to hurt the rest of the world," Paulson was quoted as saying.</p>

Dalian's graduates are equal in quality to those of the United States or Ireland and "maybe a bit better," said Kirby Jefferson, the Intel plant's general manager and a veteran of facilities in Ireland and the United States

China is moving up the supply chain," said T. J. Bond, chief Asia economist at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. "The view that China produces labor-intensive goods but purchases high-value-added goods from abroad may be roughly correct today, but it need not last forever."

China is on course to catch up with the United States and join the front ranks of world economic powers, but that is little cause for concern even among Americans, a global survey said Monday. But the same poll showed there is generally as much distrust of the United States as there is of China to "act responsibly" in world affairs.

Charity rejoices in our neighbor's good, while envy grieves over it." That quotation from Thomas Aquinas sums up the current China debate. America has a choice to make, between taking comfort in China's poverty reduction — the greatest in human history, largely achieved using our economic model — or wishing it back to the failed state it was before the boom began.

Several other executives also expressed similar thoughts at a Santa Clara, Calif., conference Wednesday hosted by Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association. The Silicon Valley group works to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs. That belief is a big shift from just a few years ago, when most prized the country mainly for its low-cost labor and emerging consumer base. Rather than simply consuming U.S. goods and services, many are betting the country will become a hub for new products and innovation.

For the past decade China has bragged of an economy growing about 8 percent a year, but the numbers are as cooked as a bowl of lo mein. University of Pittsburgh economist Thomas G. Rawski suspects the dictatorship's expansion was only 40 percent of official figures, the April 8 issue of BusinessWeek reports. How could growth domestic product have gained 24.7 percent from 1997 to 2000, he asks, when energy use fell 12.8 percent? Rawski thinks the Chinese economy shrank a couple of percent in 1998 and 1999 instead of growing more than 7 percent each year, as Beijing claims....