by Alph » Wed Nov 16, 2011 11:29 am
China is a hollowed out husk. The highlight's of China's economy are the radical inflation of figures through both fudging and technically kosher but preposterously wasteful number padding expenditures, preposterous corruption, and fantastical imperial mismanagement on a scale not seen since the last great centrally managed power seeking rapid economic growth to accelerate its considerable empire out of the backwater. (That is the USSR.) And they will seem shockingly powerful until, like a mirage, it will be clear to all that they have always been exaggerators. Of course, China is not the USSR. The USSR at least had the real fortitude. China is the parody version.
Think of every weakness the United States has. Corrupt regulators. Corrupt businesses leaders. Inflated numbers. Zombie banks. Hypnotized and corrupt media. Massively indebted cities and regional governments. China has all of them as bad as, if not worse than, the United States. The pain will come for them. And when it does, things there won't deflate to the 'man we're broke so let's get the cheap meat for the barbecue we're eating while we watch our ultra big screen football game' familiar to the Western world.
A war against China today will be the same as a war against the USSR would have been a few years before its collapse. An excellent way to push them over the edge, but nothing to be concerned about unless you happen to be a first responder on the Western side.
Trends that can't continue, won't. But until then, they will.