China’s economic slowdown: blame it on Europe

The IMF report cuts to the chase in the headline bullet points:

"A storm emanating from Europe would hit China hard"

It notes: "China's growth rate would drop abruptly if the Euro area experiences a sharp recession."

That's a big if – the euro zone as a whole could experience mild recession in 2012 – it may well be in recession as we speak.  But for the moment the kind of falling off the edge of a cliff fears about the 17-nation singe currency area have eased.

The statistics for the IMF's China report would have been compiled at the height of the panic in the late autumn, the situation now is in a transition period.

Still, the IMF's analysis that a severe recession in Europe would knock 4 percentage points off China's projected growth of 8 1/4 percent is an eye-grabber.

The Daily Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard amplifies the IMF report this morning by noting that container traffic through Shanghai, "fell by 100,000 boxes in January from a year earlier, or 4pc. Volumes fell by over one million tonnes."

The biggest losses in content volumes, according to the Shanghai International Shipping Institute, have been between Asia and Europe.