in crude imports coincided with a rebound in power output: up 6.4% in October (from a year earlier), well above the 1.5% in September and 2.7% in August. Retail sales were up 14.5% for the month from a year earlier, while fixed-asset investment? -- ?a measure of spending on construction, plant equipment and other projects? -- ?grew 20.7% year-on-year in the first 10 months of the year. But the most interesting news about China came from the OECD which produced a rosy forecast that would have been hard to believe a month or three ago: " Divergent long-term growth patterns lead to radical shifts in the relative size of economies. The United States is expected to cede its place as the world's largest economy to China, as early as 2016. India's GDP is also expected to pass that of the United States over the long term. Combined, the two Asian giants will soon surpass the collective economy of the G7 nations. Fast-ageing economic heavyweights, such as Japan and the euro area, will gradually lose ground on the global GDP table to countries with a younger population, like Indonesia and Brazil." Adam Smith identified wages as returning capital, that is wages return when the goods encompassing those wages are sold. China like Japan before it has a vast fortune of returned capital from foreign sales of its manufactured goods. In other words foreigners have long paid the wages of Chinese workers. Now it is time for Chinese authorities to start paying