  Hamish McRae  Hamish McRae: China's slowdown is a blip and
could actually help us  Economic View: A cargo of liquefied
natural gas not being imported by China is a cargo available to
be imported by us  It looks very much as though the slowdown in
China is real. So what does that mean for the rest of us? There
have, for the past 20 years, been two stories about the Chinese
economy. One is that the racing growth will continue for the
foreseeable future. The other is that the boom cannot continue
and the strains will bring it to an end. Until now the first
story has been right and the second one wrong.  Perhaps the most
extraordinary feature of the past decade has been the way growth
continued despite the catastrophic recession in the developed
world. There was no recession in China, or indeed India. In both
countries domestic demand expanded enough to offset the decline
in exports, and in the case of China, the main expansion came
from a surge in investment.  Not all that investment was wise.
The general reas