Let's not kid ourselves, China will be the biggest economy in the world within a few decades. Currently, there's every reason why is should be. The gross national product grew more than 10% last year and forecasters predict it will continue to do so in the next few years. In addition, the retail spending growth reached an astonishing 16.1% from January 2007 to October 2007.

China's middle class is estimated to be approximately 150-200 million people, more than the United States and will expect to double in the next five years. Considering the size and expansion of the markets, there's a lot of things for investors to exploit. Here's how you can exploit the market without doing much work:

Choose A China Mutual Fund

Go to the Morningstar website and choose a mutual fund that invests in China with a ratings of four or five. The rating system is not entirely perfect but it will give you an idea how good the fund will perform.

Look for Long-Term Fund Performance

Always look for funds that has performed well from the past three years. If they have a strong performance for more than four years, look closely at the company. Longer term performance, is a good predictor of future performance. It is best to avoid one year good performance because the fund might had a lucky year.

Choose Big Funds

For safety reasons, choose big funds instead of other funds. There's no specific size category but the average size fund ranges from $2.5 billion to 12.8 billion dollars. Therefore any fund greater than $10 billion dollars are considered large capitalization funds. The bigger funds are able to withstand economic downturns but sometimes they are slow to exploit strength in the markets.

Diversify

Always diversify your investments. Don't put all your eggs in one baskets. In the short term, China may seem like a risky investment but the big money is always in the long term. A good rule is to invest around 10% of your portfolio in one category.

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