Editor's Note: When the subprime debt crisis in the United States threw the world into a panic in 2008, all that China attempted to do, as the rest of the world expected, was to keep up its growth rate.

And grow it did, at an envious pace, thanks to many government-led big-ticket investment projects.

But as the global market no longer needs increasing (and increasingly expensive) supplies from China, the country cannot benefit from generating the same growth rates it once did.