Oil prices were down quite sharply on Monday. But while it could be easy to get alarmed over zigs and zags in the oil market, we don’t see any changes in the underlying realities that would cause us to revise our view that the big-picture view is that oil – along with other commodities – will be moving far higher.

It still comes down to China. If you believe China’s economy is better than typically portrayed and that China will be able to carry out its ambitious plans for infrastructure both within its own borders and in the East at large, there’s no argument: commodity scarcities and rising commodity prices are a given. If you question China’s ability to grow, then the answer is less clear. We continue to think that all the evidence, the bias of the Western press notwithstanding, points to China’s success.

At the beginning of the year we said that China was becoming an ever bigger deal in defining our own economic prospects. The year began, you may recall, with a huge thud in the market as China’s stock market and currency tumbled, rippling through markets around the world. Since mid January, the developed world has been nothing to write home about – not with Europe’s anemic economy made more problematic by Brexit; Japan’s seemingly perpetual weakness; and now three consecutive quarters of less than 2 percent growth in the U.S. To top things off, one of the major fuels behind what Western growth there is, the banking system, is trailing by a wide margin stocks in other sectors. This strongly suggests that all the money pumping by the Fed here and by central banks in Europe and Japan rather than spurring growth have led to tremendous debt and vulnerabilities that leave Western growth very much a question mark.

It’s only by looking to the East that you can find at least some rationale as to why the world seems resilient and markets have been relatively strong. Only in China have banks and stocks been aligned. Indeed, the much-maligned Chinese banks are now performing as well as or better than any other banks in the world. Relative to their overall stock market, Chinese banks are the best-performing banks of any other country.

The takeaway is that despite the Western cries about weakness in China’s financial system, indebtedness, and so on, none of these maladies are manifesting themselves in China’s banks. Or if it is, it’s to a much lesser degree than in the West.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that last night China reported a sharp uptick in one of its key manufacturing indexes. This is especially important because manufacturing had been a weakness in Chinese economic readings. Meanwhile, service sector growth remains ongoing in China, and the service sector represents more than 50 percent of China’s economy.

We’ve pointed before to what we see as the seemingly reflexive tendency of the Western financial press to always interpret China’s economy in the worst light. It’s hard not to keep stressing this when so many examples abound pointing to that tendency – along with examples of simple ignorance. A case in point is a recent article in The Wall Street Journal headlined: “Discord Between China’s Two Top Leaders Spills Into the Open.” The article was based solely on indirect statements in a Chinese newspaper. The WSJ asked for comments from the Chinese and then noted that the comments received “didn’t address the relationship between Messrs. Xi and Li.” It went on, however, to quote from the Chinese reply the statement that “China is determined to meet economic challenges under the leadership of the party and the State Council.” Since Mr. Li heads the State Council and Mr. Xi heads the party, this would seem to negate the idea that the relationship wasn’t addressed or that there was discord – and suggested, perhaps, that the reporters were unaware of which entity each leader headed.

For investors, it points to the imperative to remain with commodities and commodity-related stocks, such as Rio Tinto (RIO), Albemarle (ALB), Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI), along with gold.