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China, lately the world’s economic power-house, is playing up its admission to the elite club of global economic leaders following last weekend’s G20 summit in Washington.
China’s President Hu Jintao who joined the other world leaders at the summit sees China’s ability to deliver on its plus nine percent annual GDP growth rate as part of its responsibility to the global economy.
“Steady and relatively fast growth in China is in itself an important contribution to international financial stability and world economic growth”, said the Chinese leader who used his time in Washington to hold separate bilateral talks with leaders of fellow BRIC countries Russia and Brazil.
For the first time, the exclusive club of global economic leaders, the G7 has been formally broadened to take in fast growing economies like China, India and Brazil alongside South Africa which was the only African nation to be given a seat at the table in Washington.
The media in China sees the expansion of the club as a logical next step to the massive expansion of its economy in the last 10 years and a fitting recognition to a nation that has amassed a foreign exchange reserve of more than 1.8 trillion dollars and whose Sovereign Wealth Fund is now routinely looked to for bail out by cash starved banks in America and Europe.
In what portends a major shift in the global balance of economic power, the G20 agreed to a place for emerging market economies on the Financial Stability Forum, where top bank regulators evaluate banking and market risks.
China knows that its global influence will rest on whether it can continue to routinely deliver on its ambitious annual GDP growth targets and it is moving aggressively to implement the huge economic stimulus package the government announced weeks ago.
As part of the economic stimulus, rural industries and small enterprises in the Shanghai area have started receiving loans to re-energise their operations some of which have been hit by slowing demand from Europe and America.
The drop in demand from abroad and the cut in output it has forced on Chinese firms means that power consumption in China is cooling off, falling 3.7 percent to 269.85 billion kilowatt-hours last month, the first year-on year monthly decline since 1999. 
“The sudden slowdown in power demand shows many companies in the manufacturing sector have cut output due to a continuous price slump in industrial commodities both at home and abroad”, said an analyst at the Shanghai-based Guotai Ju’nan Securities.
However, in the midst of the fall in power consumption, China’s state Grid Corporation, the country’s biggest power supplier, will double its investment for the next two years to a total of $169.9 billion for grid construction nationwide