China Today

By Rich Kozlovich

Over the last few months I have been paying more than the usual attention to what has been going on in China, and to be honest, I have had trouble sorting it all out. Normally the patterns in life keep repeating, but the China paradigm has been difficult for me to see.

China has unique problems that most of the rest of the world doesn’t understand. First, they have a huge population (which India may soon overtake), a totalitarian government committed to unending growth, even to the point of building cities that are vacant, a banking system that has serious problems that may soon erupt, huge funding going to building up a massive military machine, and a population that is questioning the validity of a communist party run society.

The country is huge, but most of it isn't well inhabited because so much is mountainous, semi-desert or desert. That means that most of that huge population of one billion plus is living in an area about the size of everything east of the Mississippi River in the U.S.

Due to their insane rules on how many children a family can have, girls are aborted way more than boys. The end result is that there aren't enough girls to go around. Having thousands of deprived unhappy young men isn't a basis for a stable society.

Finally after reading all these ‘China’ experts I have found an article that clarifies this whole thing…for me at least. Please enjoy!

Four Shocks That Could Change China
By Paul Roderick Gregory

In the past four months, the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) has experienced four shocks that could materially affect, if not eventually end, its “leading role” in Chinese society.

First, on December 13 of last year, a mob of villagers forced out local party leaders and the police and took control of the town of Wukan. Enraged by illegal land grabs and police brutality, the villagers installed their own representatives after gaining concessions from national authorities. The Wukan uprising is symbolic of the two hundred thousand mass protests reported for 2010.

Second, on February 27, a key government think tank issued its China 2030 report in conjunction with the World Bank. Rapid growth could only be sustained, the report argued, by giving free rein to the private sector and ending the preferential treatment of the state economy: The role of the government “needs to change fundamentally” from running the state sector to creating a rule of law and the other accoutrements of a market economy. A month later (on March 28), the state council approved a financial reform pilot experiment to legalize private financial institutions and allow private citizens to invest abroad.

China 2030 is an open warning that China’s vaunted state capitalism model cannot sustain growth and usher China to the next level. A faltering economy would pose an imminent threat to the CPC’s claim to its leading role........