All of Asia will suffer if China's economy comes crashing to earth, but one country should fare better than most - the region's rising star, India.

Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have prospered mightily by plugging into China's production network and selling the capital equipment powering its industrial boom. Southeast Asia and Australia are thriving on China's thirst for commodities.

By contrast, one of India's key advantages, according to Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach, is that it does not rely excessively on exports as a source of growth. Exports are expanding fast but are still only around 10 per cent of GDP.

"As a result, India has much better balance in its growth model than the rest of the region - giving it a built in macro-resilience that other Asian economies can only envy," Roach said in a report.

A favourite pastime among economists and investors lately has been estimating the fallout of Beijing's efforts to halt overinvestment in sectors such as steel and property without killing the broader economy

Not surprisingly, banks' views vary a lot depending on whether they think China is already starting to slow in response to credit curbs and a slew of administrative orders.

JP Morgan Chase expects China to expand 11.3 per cent this year, assuming interest rates are raised just a quarter of a percentage point as part of the campaign to cool investment.

Under those circumstances, if China's slowdown does not extend to exports or consumption, South Korea's export outlook should remain bright and the economy's growth rate should accelerate to six per cent from 3.1 per cent in 2003, said Jiwon Lim, an economist with the bank in Seoul.

Citigroup similarly sees only a remote chance of a hard landing in China and has revised up its forecast for South Korea's GDP growth this year to 6.3 per cent from 5.8 per cent.

But at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo, Rob Subbaraman is convinced that China is already losing momentum and has lowered his projection of 2004 GDP growth to 7.5 per cent from 8.0 per cent.

Because China grew 9.7 per cent in the year through the first quarter, that implies a sharp slowdown to a six per cent rate in the second half of the year with direct consequences for its immediate neighbours, Taiwan and South Korea.

"We are more concerned about Korea because it has become so dependent on exports for economic growth, and therefore is very exposed to a hard economic landing in China," Subbaraman said.

South Korea derived 36 per cent of its export growth from China in 2003, and removing that prop would have a big impact on a consumer sector still nursing a hangover from a debt binge, said Morgan Stanley's Roach.

The story is similar in Japan, which has recovered briskly from a decade in the doldrums thanks to exports and investment. Not only did China account for 32 per cent of Japan's 2003 export growth, but capital spending was driven by expansion in those industries trading with China.

"A China slowdown puts all that at risk. With private consumption growth remaining anaemic in Japan -- holding in the 1.0 to 1.5 per cent range -- the possibility of a China-led reversal of Japan's external growth impetus should not be taken lightly," Roach wrote.

"Even more dramatic impacts would be expected in Taiwan and Hong Kong, economies that have now become appendages of the Greater China production platform," he added.

Taiwan's merchandise exports and imports totalled about 90 per cent of GDP last year, as did the Philippines' and Thailand's.

India's, by contrast, were little more than 20 per cent compared with around 60 per cent for China. India, which is in the midst of general elections, has earned brickbats over the years for stunting trade by hunkering down behind high tariff barriers.

But these import taxes are now falling as part of reforms that are amplifying the cyclical impact of record-low interest rates and a bountiful monsoon. Investors, wary of putting all their eggs in the China basket, are also increasingly impressed by the patient restructuring of Indian industry.

"It's a good thing to look at diversification and at an economic dynamic that is largely independent," said Sanjeev Sanyal of Deutsche Bank in Singapore.

Sanyal said short-term fears of a slowdown in China were misplaced: markets should welcome prospects for a marginally slower but infinitely more sustainable expansion in China. But that did not invalidate the bullish case for tapping into what Sanyal called India's extremely strong growth dynamics.

"It is becoming another China," Sanyal said. "Irrespective of what happens on the political front, you will see very very high rates of growth over several years," he said.