Global Economy

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<b>China slashes interest rates as panic spreads</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The People's Bank of China cut interest rates by more than 1pc point as the economy crumbles and millions of jobs are predicted to go ahead of Christmas.
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<b>Today, around 500 protesters rioted at the Kai Da toy factory in Dongguan in the Pearl River delta, flipping over a police car and trashing computers in a dispute over payoffs to 80 fired workers. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Tens of thousands of factories across the region have already shut their gates. </span></b>

Yin Weimin, China's Social Security minister, has revealed that employment is the Communist Party's number one concern in the downturn and said the<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> "situation is critical". </span>Unemployment is expected to rise from 4pc to 4.5pc by the end of the year and anecdotal reports have suggested that 3m people have already been fired in the industrial province of Zhejiang alone.

Two major provinces, Shandong and Hubei, have already responded by banning companies from firing staff without permission from the government
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As expected. Here goes China. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<img src='http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01121/china1_1121284c.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />