For investors who want a slice of Chinese-style growth but do not want to leave Europe, it is plain where to go – Germany. While attention has focused on the plight of the eurozone’s periphery in recent months, the country at the heart of the single currency zone has been on the kind of growth spurt usually associated with emerging markets.
German industrial production is growing at an annual rate of 14.8 per cent. This is in a different league from the US (5.8 per cent) or France (5.6 per cent), and almost on a par with China’s 14.9 per cent.
The gap inside Europe’s industrial economy is new; during the last cycle, German industrial growth was similar to that of the other big European economies.