China's domestic market could be the recession buster we need

Late last week, amid falling export sales, industrial overcapacity, and massive unemployment, China's economy reported its worst quarter in almost a decade. Although GDP grew 6.1percent over the previous year, this was significantly lower than the 6.8 percent gain of the previous three months and the 10.6 percent gain reported a year ago.

Of course, industrial slowdowns are relative. At the same time in the United States, the economy contracted by 4 percent, and Japan's economy contracted by 6.6 percent. Still, for a country that has set itself a threshold of eight percent yearly growth as the bare minimum necessary to create necessary jobs and maintain stability, a drop to 6.1 percent is devastating.