Premier Wen Jiabao should be more upbeat than a year ago when he delivers China’s version of the state of the union address at the opening of the legislature’s annual session on Friday and then faces the media at its close.

Wen’s annual report to the nearly 3,000 national People’s Congress deputies will spell out this year’s broad economic, social and foreign policy goals.

He is expected to declare that China has become the first major economy to recover from the global economic downturn after withstanding its toughest test since the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997.  Last year the world’s third largest economy registered the world’s fastest growth, expanding by 8.7 per cent – and outpacing Wen’s 8 per cent target – as most countries slowly struggled along the road to recovery.

Despite concerns about the sustainabilty of the mainland recovery, louder voices hailed the country for overtaking the United States as the biggest car market, surpassing Germany as the No 1 exporter and potentially replacing Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

With the world dazed by banking and property collapses, China still has a purse full of money as the superlatives kept coming last year.  For the first time in history China has the richest banks in the world, the largest phone companies, the biggest internet population, the most nuclear power plants under construction and possibly the biggest middle class.

South China Morning Post – 2nd March 2010

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