“We deliver the impossible, miracles take a little longer,” goes the saying. The Chinese growth story of recent years would have been considered impossible a few years ago, but is a miracle required for it to continue?

The thing you need to bear in mind about China is that if she experiences a growth rate which is merely quite a lot bigger than the growth rate enjoyed by other countries, then that would be considered by many to be a disaster.

In the three months from April to June GDP expanded by a stunning 10.1 per cent. Sorry, was that stunning? Ahhh, the China Daily described this growth rate as an example of a “continuous dip”.

This morning, news revealed that export sales expanded by 21.1 per cent in the year to August, and Bloomberg talked about growth slowing.

Today, the China Daily headlined: “Inflation retreats, slowdown worry grows.” It said: “Some economists have advocated a government stimulus plan, to jumpstart a raft of key projects nationwide with at least 100 billion yuan of government spending. Others suggest that Beijing give tax holidays to businesses and cut individual income tax to encourage domestic consumption.”

Everything is relative. The US sneezed, caught a cold, and which seems to have led to pneumonia. The lurgey has spread to Europe; as for China, it felt no more than the faintest of draughts, but it got the headline writers singing woe all the same.

Chinese inflation is down. In May it was 7.7 per cent, then it fell to 7.1 per cent, followed by 6.3 per cent, and then August saw inflation running at 4.9 per cent. So those falls are pretty rapid. The initial inflation surge in China was kicked off by the soaring price of pork, as blue ear disease killed off millions of pigs. The inflation disease spread, as Chinese consumers substituted their pork consumption for other goods. There are those who see the dip in Chinese inflation as temporary; the FT, for example, recently drew parallels with the US in the early 1970s, but the latest data would appear to contradict these fears.

What the global economy really needs is for China to start consuming more, to buy Western goods. If the calls for the Chinese government to respond to falling inflation by pushing up demand are answered, then that could be precisely what happens.

Don’t expect it all to occur overnight, however. China needs more balanced growth – it needs to see its consumers spend more. She can no longer rely on selling goods to the West, but not even China can change so fast that it will make a difference this year, and probably not next year, either.