China's new leadership is threatening to stay content with slower economic growth, and the country's manufacturing, housing, and export sectors are experiencing problems. Nonetheless, China has an opportunity to influence economic growth in 2012 through stimulus measures to its own economy.

While there might be symbolic appeal to the idea of China riding to Europe's rescue, the reality would be less romantic: a relatively poor country would be sending its savings to a collection of wealthy ones.

Unlike in the United States, any losses from property market lending are likely to be absorbed by the state. And they will be done so in a manner that will not impair the Chinese banking system's ability to extend credit as was the case in the United States.

The world saw such extraordinary uncertainty in 2011 that a simple failure to repeat that debilitating climate of uncertainty in 2012 may engender a moderate recovery, especially in the US economy.

Last week, Russia and China obstructed the Obama administration’s Syria policy by vetoing an anti-Assad Security Council resolution backed by the Arab League, Britain, France, and the United States.  As harmful as this defeat was in its immediate consequences, it may bode even worse for efforts to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

The European financial crisis and the ineffective effort to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program are crashing into each other. As the European Union adopts new restrictions on importing Iranian oil, the most-troubled EU economies will continue to seek delays and exceptions.

There has been much gnashing of teeth and rolling of eyes over eurozone leaders' repeated inability to solve their financial crisis once and for all. The rest of the world can best help, the reasoning goes, by shouting exhortations at Europe to just try harder. But what, exactly, are Europeans being urged to do?

China's inflation rate has reached a point where it is sparking social unrest. The world's second-largest economy faces some fundamental choices if it is to restore stability.