I'd heard that 100,000 factories had closed in China since the start of the economic troubles. Whilst in the suburbs of Beijing I pulled into an industrial part to see what was going on. Lot's of closed factories was what, big state of the art facilities recently built. In one case the local government had planted trees in the grounds as the area is prone to desertification.

The worst of the crisis seems to have passed here though, we are starting to see trucks hauling things like steel around again, but for a few months there everything was frozen. Electricity production dropped 20% in november year on year. That says a lot.