China’s quickly expanding economy helped inspire the Group of Twenty nations to start holding leadership summits in 2008. Heads of state from the world’s most economically influential countries along with European Union officials met then to brainstorm ideas as markets, jobs and companies worldwide fell under the U.S.-driven Global Financial Crisis. China was still growing in 2008, extending already more than 20 years of industrialization padded by budgetary stimulus to head off spillover from the global crisis. Annual growth in China, the world No. 2 economy, was hitting double digits.