Businessweek reports:

The Year of the Rat has certainly gotten off to a less than auspicious start for China. The country got buffeted by the worst winter storms in half a decade, causing food prices to soar and pushing inflation to an alarming 8.7% in February (BusinessWeek, 3/11/08). The Shanghai Composite Index is off 30% since the beginning of 2008, and property prices have started falling in several major cities. China's heavy economic involvement with the internationally unpopular regime in Sudan (BusinessWeek, 2/13/08), and most recently the bloodshed in Tibet (BusinessWeek, 3/17/08) threaten to spoil the country's Olympic parade.

Now comes the U.S. bear market and housing collapse. If you heap this looming U.S. recession onto the litany of China's other woes does it spell a recipe for a total China meltdown? Don't bet on it. In fact, analysts say that the question of decoupling—the notion that China is contagion free from a global slowdown—is actually a misnomer, since "historically, the Chinese economy has never been coupled," says Jonathan Anderson, Asian chief economist at UBS.

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http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080318_747713.htm?chan=globalbiz_asia+index+page_asia+investing