This fall, worried reports have been voiced that China may be losing momentum in the global economy. These reports are based on facts such as the 2008 mid-year statistics showing that the Chinese GDP growth is down to 8 percent.

In case you’re not a GDP junkie like me, I’ll put those 8 percent into perspective. The average GDP growth rate in the world in the last 50 years has been about 2.5 percent. The US growth rate was a bit over 3 percent during the first half of this year. In other words, 8 percent is really hughe. It can be dwarfed only by the even more gigantic expectations the world places on the country.

The fact that an 8 percent GDP growth is able to cause concerns and is viewed by some as slow is a powerful testament to China’s overwhelming expectity status. China is the hot topic in most Western world major corporation board rooms (“we have to find new concepts and unique values, or Chinese companies will take over”), the focus of education developments in universities all over the world (“we’ll start new expensive master’s programs, soon they will be flooded with Chinese super students”), the country is even the foundation for the entire careers of some creativity speakers and management gurus (no names…) travelling around the world spreading the gospel of Chinese ways and the danger of not jumping on the China train.

Is China such a super power? No. It might well be, who knows, but it does certainly not owe its reputation, all the headlines in newspapers and business magazines across the world, the board room discussions, the university development, or the speaker and guru careers, to its present and past. A striking picture, just a few weeks ago it set its first austronauts (or, as the world is adapting to the expectity, most of us has learned that they should be called taikonauts, that’s what they say in China) on a spacewalk. Just four decades or so later than the US and Russian austronauts (sorry, taikonauts) made footprints on the moon in the old millennium. And even a year later than tiny polar bear country Sweden’s Chris “Birdsong” took a space promenade.

“2 Chinese boys”, China’s no. 1 15-microseconds-of-famers. This clip has been viewed 8 million times and counting. They have an entire youtube catalog amassing many million views. The future of pop music..?