China Gets Into the Bailout Game

China has become a proud member of the countries throwing massive amounts of money at their economic problems.

From the Associated Press:

BEIJING (AP) — China unveiled a $586 billion stimulus package Sunday in its biggest move to inoculate the world's fourth-largest economy against the global financial crisis.

Chinese and Japanese stocks soared Monday in early trading after the government's announcement. The Cabinet approved the plan to invest money in infrastructure and social welfare by the end of 2010, a statement on the government's Web site said.

Some of the money will come from the private sector. The statement did not say how much of the spending is on new projects and how much is for ventures already in the pipeline that will be speeded up.

China's export-driven economy is starting to feel the pinch of weakening U.S. and European economies, and the government has already cut key interest rates three times in less than two months in a bid to spur economic expansion.

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I can't say I'm surprised by this. It seems that nearly every country has some sort of stimulus package out there now. No country wants to be Icelanded I suppose.

The article says Hu Jintao will be in Washington later this week to discuss with other nations what the plan is going forward.

It sounds as if a lot of this money from China is going to be put into infrastructure. Barack Obama really likes how much China has focused on infrastructure in the past several years. In fact, he said he wants to model much of the US' energy on rebuilding its infrastructure.

Now that's gotta get under Obama-haters' skin: Obama is envious of aspects of China's economy.