People now are very concerned about China's growth this year, but my question to you is more general. How do you see PRC in 10-20 years? Will it be a new empire or will it go down like the Soviet Union?
China's one child policy is beginning to bite them in the rear. More people are dying than being born. That means fewer people to support the elderly and go to work every day.
China doesn't have a reputation for innovation but necessity is the mother of invention and they'll probably figure it out. Alibaba and Baidu seem to be doing well without Western influence. If they find a need to automate as a result of their declining population, coupled with their lower wages...bad combination for the rest of the world.
I wouldn't worry about pollution. It's the worst in the world, but that could change quickly. China still has a dictator and when the NPC decides to implement something it happens pretty quick, unlike the U.S. where we have lawsuits and special interest groups to derail progress. Besides, it doesn't seem to worry the Chinese.
They make a lot of crappy stuff. But so did Japan and South Korea many years ago. If they ever institute the levels of professionalism that exists in Germany, South Korea and Japan.....watch out.
And they have the largest middle class in the world. And it is getting larger. They see movies and tv shows from the West and they want everything we have. I think that their domestic consumption will increase at faster rate with each additional year. And it will become more important for growth than their export market.
China has a lot of financial reserves and they are acquiring oil and natural gas fields as fast as they can rob them from their neighbors. And from what I have gathered, the Chinese are currently proud to be Chinese and patriotic. To me, that suggests that they will agree with the decisions made by the NPC. In other words, there wont' be any more public protests or Tienanmen Square events.
China has been acquiring large quantities of gold for the last several years. They want to institute a gold backed currency to compete against the dollar which is backed by nothing other than aircraft carriers. With 1/4 of the world's population and a large gold (and silver etc...) reserve they could eventually displace NYC, London and Frankfurt as a leading financial center.
Fresh Water is in short supply in China and they recently diverted a river that flowed into India which pissed off India. There are also some contested areas between India and China and India moved some troops to Northern India along their border this week as a reaction to China.
There is also China's expansion in the China Sea, relying on a ridiculous 9 dash map line that is 500 years old. And they seem to be building up their military as fast as they can steal the technology from the West. And while China expands in Asia, Russia is expanding in Europe. I don't want to be pessimistic or sound like an End Times Fatalist, but it does seem like we are there. If you have ever read any psychic predictions about the future it seems that many of them are coming true or at least seem reasonable. I know some (most) psychics are frauds, but when you read predictions from people that lived 100, 300, 500 years ago and they all said the same thing......it makes you go hmmm...
But...China is not going away. I don't want to seem unpatriotic, but the 20th century belonged to America. And I think the 21st will belong to China.
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