Why the world is watching China’s stimulus package

China’s slowing economic growth is having impacts that extend beyond its borders, with the potential even to reverse roles in some long-standing trade relations, though the government’s stimulus measures could ease concerns, according to analysts.

“Slowing Chinese growth has a cascading effect across the entire globe,” said Nick Marro, a Hong Kong-based lead analyst for global trade with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). “The prolonged period of demand weakness that we’ve seen in China has already been acting as a net drag on global activity.”

The country, long dubbed the world’s factory, uses imported fuels, materials and machinery to make goods for its vast domestic market, as well as for exports, an anchor for the 126-trillion-yuan (US$17.7 trillion) gross domestic product.