For awhile some advocates of globalization contended that China and other developing countries were immune from the banking crisis hitting the US and other advanced economies. They argued a so-called “de-coupling” thesis which said that an independent growth dynamic was at work in what were once called “underdeveloped nations” and that they could ride out the storm.

Not.

Here is just a snippet of headlines from China in the past week or so, courtesy of Doug Noland at Prudent Bear:

February 2 – Bloomberg (Robert Hutton):  “Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the worldwide economic crisis shows ‘how dangerous a totally unregulated market can be.’ ‘It brings disastrous consequences,’ Wen said… ‘The main causes are for some economies, they have imbalances in their economic structure. For a long period of time they’ve had dual deficits, trade deficits and fiscal deficits.’”

February 4 – Bloomberg (Luo Jun):  “Chinese banks may have offered a record 1.2 trillion yuan ($175 billion) of new loans in January, the China Securities Journal reported… The four biggest state-owned banks completed 20% of their full-year target, with majority of the loans lent for railways, highways, electricity grids and the infrastructure, report said.”

February 3 – Bloomberg (Wang Ying):  “China’s oil refineries posted a loss of 149.3 billion yuan ($22 billion) in the first 11 months of last year because of higher raw material costs… China faced an energy shortage in the first half though supplies became ample in the second half as the economy slowed, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said…”

February 1 – Bloomberg (Dune Lawrence):  “China’s retail sales during the week- long Lunar New Year holiday climbed to 290 billion yuan ($42.4 billion), 14% higher than last year’s holiday period, the Ministry of Commerce reported yesterday.”

February 3 – Bloomberg (Chia-Peck Wong):  “Hong Kong’s home sales fell for a seventh month in January…  The number of residential units changing hands last month slumped 67% from January 2008…”