Will China Implode?

WILL CHINA IMPLODE? EXPLODE?

     By way of metaphor: As Mr. Gailey said to Judge Harper in Miracle on 34^th Street, “You Honour, I would like to read the following facts into the record.”

• The Chinese calendar goes back about 6.000 years.

• The major portion of the Great Wall took about 400 years to build.

• China was closed to the outside world until President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opened up China to the West in 1972.

• In 40 years, China has grown to become the second largest and fastest growing economy in the world.

• China has a population of about 1.3 Billion people.

• China elevated about 500.000.000 people from poverty to the middle-class.

     Despite the fact that the above is common knowledge, it would appear that there are many who knows all about China but either understands little or pretends to.  The latter turn everything that comes out of China into a media event in order to sell stocks or to sell bonds, or to sell books, or to jack up their ratings to justify charging more to advertisers who sell diet books and clown food.

     A few years ago, I quipped, “When the numbers out of China are bad, the Wall Street experts gloat. When the numbers out of China are good, the Wall Street Experts doubt the numbers.”

Today?

     “When the numbers out of China are bad, the Wall Street experts advise everyone to ignore the numbers. When the numbers out of China are good, the Wall Street experts call it a bubble.”

     Then, too, we have the clichés, slogans, and platitudes.

     Hard landing, soft landing, housing bubble, risk on, risk off, and so on.

     When the eventual negative impact of China’s one-child policy was discovered by the West, the experts consoled themselves by predicting an eventual disaster for China arising from an aging population.  I said, “China will change the policy.” They did.

     When experts said, “China has a housing bubble,” I said, “China has a housing inventory.”

     Experts have prognosticated every possible scenario that would result in a disaster for China.  I said, “China will succeed because China will do as we did and not as we say.”

     Then we have the irony.  The people who disparage China for having a “controlled economy” discuss the Chinese economy as if China can’t control its own economy when a glitch arises. 

     One expert said, China has a housing bubble, China had a stock market crash, China is attempting to control its currency.  I turned to my wife and said, the experts were saying that about us not too long ago.

     When I said, China will succeed because China will do as we did and not as we say, I was referring to:

• China building a hydro-electric power dam; 
• China building a super-computer, 
• China building a high-speed rail system. 

This because: 

• We, built the Hoover dam, 
• We built super-computers, 
• We built the Trans-Continental Railroad. 

We went to Africa and to Latin America to do business.   

China is going to Africa and to Latin America to do business.

   

We built the Panama Canal. 

China is building the Nicaragua Canal.

The only question we must ask is this: Can China sustain a model with an increasingly affluent nation without a major reset?   

How long can an affluent society continue to become more affluent without that society asserting itself or, at the very least, transforming?

Europeans migrated to the U.S.  

 Africans and North Africans are migrating to Europe.   

Soon, the Chinese will migrate.  Where to? That remains to be seen.

Now, in my lifetime, the world population grew from 3.5 billion people to 7 billion (+) people.  Which paradigm will manifest itself?

1.  The world population grows another 3.5 billion people in 50 years to a world population to 10.5 billion people.

2.  The world population doubles in the next 50 years to a total world population of 14 billion people.

3.  A pandemic or other natural disaster causes a global humanitarian crisis.

Back to China.

The increasing affluence results in a resistance to constraints on personal aspirations.

The affluent seeking cheaper labour outsource jobs, creating an increasing economic disparity between the haves and the have nots.

The rising middle class transforms into a consumer class, into an investor class, into a collective investment fund, and begins an escalating “financial migration”, a migration of economic power.

China deploys its military to protect its global economic and diplomatic interests.

Recall our own history…again.

• The US Military in Europe in the forties.
• The US Military in Korea in the fifties.
• The US Military in Vietnam in the sixties.
• The US Military in the Middle-East today.

     The only focus should be this: Can China continue to embrace our historical paradigm in a 21^st century world?  Especially since Emerging Nations are no longer targets for colonial powers.  At least not in the traditional sense.

Emerging Nations Economic Union

Solving theEmerging Crisis

Forming an E20

    
 In addition, with the modification of the one-child policy to allow for a second child, the rising Chinese population will, of necessity, extend beyond the borders of China.

•  Other Challenges China Will Face:
• The Decline & Rise of the Russian Economy
• The Rising Indian Economy and Technology Evolution
• African nations forming an Economic Union
• Possible rising US militarism as a response to real or perceived threats from around the globe.

In addition, do not forget:  Democracies are designed to last about 200 years.

Empires Go Through Stages.

The Scottish Historian, Alexander Tyler, wrote in 1787 that there are the following stages:

• Bondage to spiritual faith
• Spiritual faith to courage
• Courage to liberty
• Liberty to abundance
• Abundance to complacency
• Complacency to apathy
• Apathy to dependence
• Dependence back into bondage.

The two main differences between then and now:

1. The stakes are much higher.

2. The price of failure is more severe.

     With 7 billion people, the internet and other forms of technological advances, more powerful weapons, and complacency, what will happen over the remaining 85% of the 21^st century; of the first century of the new millennium?

     Will China explode upon the global political, diplomatic, and economic scene?  
     Will China implode, unable to sustain the weight of its own success? 
     Will the world adjust to a new normal—one where we capitulate to or resign ourselves to the need to cooperate in order to survive—to embrace co-operation as a means to a benefit for all despite that it will require compromise? 

      What will happen will begin to unfold before our eyes. However, if history is any teacher, we will define what we see to conform to what we want to see.

     “That you cannot predict the future is not the proper rebuff to the person who says, get off the tracks—there’s a train coming.” ~ Slim Fairview.

If you find anything here to be helpful, please don't hesitate to send me a really tricked out Mac Book and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note. Sincerely, Slim.
Or  GoFundMe  

Bob Asken
Box 33
Pen Argyl, PA 18072

Warmest regards, 
Slim.

slimviews@gmail.com

Copyright (c) 2015  Bob Asken
All rights reserved.