China is set this year to notch up more milestones on the way to trade superpowerdom. Not only is Beijing expected to rack up another record trade surplus with the US, it will also eclipse Japan to become the world's third largest importer - behind Germany and the US.

Zeng Peiyan, vice-premier, said this week that total trade this year would amount to about $800bn (?96bn, ￡476bn). Imports have grown at 40.5 per cent to $298.6bn in the first nine months and may reach about $395bn for the whole year, economists said.

But the ubiquitous question now is: how sustainable is China's import binge?

The answer will help to determine not only China's trade balance - and therefore the course of its prickly trade relationship with the US - but also the international prices of a gamut of metals, ores and other commodities.

A confluence of evidence, anecdotal and factual, suggests the runaway import demand of the first nine months may start to moderate over the next several months as fixed asset investment cools following a series of measures taken to rein in credit and alleviate overheating, according to bankers, economists and industrial executives.

Wang Dayong, a director at China Development Bank, the top Chinese policy bank, said torrid rates of credit growth seen over the first nine months were now starting to slow, particularly among the big four state banks, which control about 60 per cent of total banking assets.

Peter Marcus, managing director of World Steel Dynamics, a New York-based steel analysis company, said that, during his last two weeks visiting several of China's largest steel companies, the observation was repeatedly made that sources of credit were tightening.

Jonathan Anderson, economist at UBS Securities in Hong Kong, said the excess pool of liquidity that was driving credit growth might soon run dry as the People's Bank of China (PBoC) drained funds from the system. "If the PBoC holds the line, we should soon see the credit cycle turning, with a deceleration in loan growth, investment and imports," Mr Anderson wrote in a report.

An official at PBoC, who declined to be named, said the bank intended to slow loan growth to 11 per cent in the fourth quarter compared with 19 per cent in the first nine months while at the same time avoiding a policy-induced slump in demand. "Our efforts are starting to take effect," he added.

This, if achieved, could have a significant cooling effect on fixed asset investment, which grew at 30 per cent in the first nine months and drove demand for imports of copper, nickel, zinc, aluminium, iron, steel, machinery, petrochemicals and other key items.

If fixed asset investment cools - as observers now expect - the impact could eventually be felt on the world prices of many commodities. China consumes between a fifth and a third of the world's trade alumina, iron ore, zinc, copper and stainless steel, according to Deutsche Bank research.

The influence on prices could be particularly pronounced if it turns out Chinese metal producers have built up large inventories. "It could certainly cause tremors on the world's metal markets," said Giles Chance, head of research at Evolution Securities in Shanghai.

In the longer term, Chinese officials and observers appear sanguine over the prospects for both investment and import growth. Wang Mengkui, minister at the State Council Development Research Centre, the top government think-tank, said that, in the next three years, China's import total would reach $1,000bn, far outpacing exports which, he said, would reach $1,000bn only by 2020.

A growing number of officials are now saying, in private at least, that China may be prepared to countenance a trade deficit, perhaps as early as next year.

A shift from the post-Asian crisis policy of "using 1,000 strategies and 100 plans" to propel exports has derived partly from a sense that Beijing, which now has $401bn in foreign currency reserves, no longer needs current account security. Another factor behind China's acceptance of imports was the need to counter growing protectionist sentiment in the US.

In addition, China needs to import a range of capital goods to fuel its staggering infrastructure ambitions. Mr Wang at the China Development Bank said that, in the next 17 years, China planned to shift 500m people from the countryside to cities. They would all need houses, sewage systems, water, heating, transport, electricity, telephones and many other amenities.

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