Most experts believed that China’s economy would crash after the Olympics. But Beijing’s strong-arm tactics will keep its finances on track, says emerging markets expert Irwin Greenstein, writing for Contrarian Profits.

China’s numbers remain quite strong. The China Daily ran a couple of articles today that clearly showed ongoing growth of the world’s fastest growing economy.

The newspaper reported that China’s GDP hit 10.8% over the past five years, quite a strong showing but down from the peak of 11.9% in the second quarter of 2007.

Retail sales were up an astounding 23.3% in July, the strongest increase in the past 10 years. At the same time, fixed-asset investment growth also surged in July to 29.2% compared with 26.8% for the first half of the year.

Despite these strong gains, China Daily cited a quarterly survey by the National Bureau of Statistics which said that 64 out of 100 economists estimate growth will be slower than 10% for 2008 – with the average prediction at 10%.

If in fact these experts are correct, investors could be looking at bottom-feeding opportunity later this year.

China’s economic growth has mainly been driven by its coastal areas, which have turned themselves into export powerhouses, said China Daily. But these regions have suffered the most from the worldwide economic contraction.

Meanwhile, the slack is being picking up in China’s inland regions. In the first half, the lowest GDP growth recorded across the six central provinces was 11.8%, according to the China Daily article, with some of those provinces actually notching up to 13% year-on-year.

Most of that growth is attributed to infrastructure expansion such as roads, rail and airports. Fixed-asset investment in the central provinces surged 35.3% year-on-year, much higher than the nation’s average of 26.3 percent.

Those numbers clearly indicate investment opportunities in construction companies and related industries such as cement, logistics and of course steel.

A more revealing outlook for China’s economy comes from the news that the credit ratings of ten mainland commercial banks improved over the past year.

Compared with five banks that were rated AAA last August, seven got the top rating this year, with China Merchants Bank and China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd upgraded from AA+ and AA, respectively.

China’s economy remains a juggernaut. The bulls can still reap impressive gains; the bears may find their entry point toward the end of the year.