The news that China's economy is showing signs of being OK after all has come as a bit of a shock. Today it was announced that growth in the fourth quarter rose to 7.9 per cent [2].

In 2012, the Chinese economy had grown at its slowest pace in 13 years, but in the final quarter it suddenly started performing well. There's a cautious feeling that the country is on its way to recovery:

"It is obvious that the slowdown in the Chinese economy has halted for the moment," Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism told the BBC.

But it doesn't really look like China is on its way back to rapacious growth. Neither, though, does it look like a slump (which was panicked about last summer). It's all a bit less dramatic than that: at some point China had to move from a low-income country to a middle-income one - and that point, it seems, is being reached. With a middle-income country comes smaller marginal productivity and an ageing population: middle-income countries simply don't grow at 10 per cent.

There are a few thoughts flying around that the figures themselves might also be less dramatic than everyone thinks. Here's Invesco's take on China's GDP, (via The Financial Times' beyondbrics [3]) which includes various considerations like power production and rail freight. The graph shows the difference between the estimated and "real" GDP:

The mood swings in the "real" GDP are much smaller. On this version, the uptick over the last quarter is more like 5.5 per cent. All in all, the recovery might be a little less bumpy than we thought.