Robert Peston travels to China to investigate the effects of the economic slowdown. In the frozen northeast he sees a part of the country which has slowed down far more than the Chinese government is prepared to admit. He visits an area where private business has shut down and workers been thrown out of work, and sees a 'ghost town' in which a vast sum of money has been wasted on housing which lies unoccupied or unfinished.
        In more prosperous south China, Peston goes shopping to explore whether the country is managing to stop the slowdown by generating growth through services and spending. He looks at the recent stock market crash and asks what the potential political consequences of low growth might be. In candid interviews with a leading Chinese policy-maker; the British Chancellor George Osborne; bankers and economists, he evaluates what China's slowdown means for the country itself, the world economy and for the UK, at a time when the British government seeks closer economic ties with China.