Reflections of a stormy petrel

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2011/10/29/china_real_estate_bubble_bursts_with_violence/page/full/

While the computerized imbecility of the so-called "markets" has been scaring itself stupid with absurd tales of the Euro's coming collapse, the Chinese property bubble has been showing every sign of bursting. It can't even be said that people haven't been paying attention; journalists, for once, have done their duty, and Europe's leading business newspaper, the Financial Times, has published reports that should have worried any business person with their heads other than in their anus. But alas, there is no shaking the hive mind. While property owners in Shanghai rioted against their own developers, the moron mob kept demanding more and more reassurances from basically solid Western European economies, and raising interest rates according to their own self-induced terrors, thus making matters much more difficult. But as there is nothing so bad that a really bad politician cannot make worse - and abominably stupid at the same time - those responsible for the new European stability fund have concluded their labours by carrying out a humiliating and entirely useless visit to China, begging the Chinese for money. China, you miserable idiots, is not your friend. They will do nothing to reinforce Europe, and at any rate they have big and swiftly increasing problems at home. You have sold our dignity for absolutely no advantage.

Simone Moro, an Italian mountain climber, managed to reach the top of Everest but was forced to make his way down on the northern (Chinese) side. The Chinese authorities promptly took him for a spy, arrested him and expelled him.

I think that the future of the whole world depends on two monstrous gambles, in which most of us are concerned. One is to do with Islam: the effort to tame the rebellious and Titanic spirit of this religion by continued acquaintance and collaboration with a world that now includes not only the West but also the Far East and India. The other is the Chinese leadership's gamble that they can keep the colossal Chinese rate of economic growth going for another generation, absorbing the immense mass of unemployed in new businesses (the unemployed in China are estimated to be anything up to fifty or a hundred million) and stabilize the Chinese state on the income from taxation. If that fails, China might collapse into another of its civil wars, which are historically her reaction to change; but a civil war in a country of 1.4billion and with the atom bomb simply does not bear thinking about.

(That is why I was alarmed by bufo_viridis' offhand reference to the likelihood of China invading and taking over Taiwan by force. This would be a disastrous step; even supposing for a second that the US and Japan would not become involved in such a war, Taiwan is a virtually independent country that is one of the world's top ten economies. Its investments abroad, and foreign investments in it, are enormous. Its sudden destruction in a surely bloody and expensive war - Taiwan is armed to the teeth, as far as its small size allows it to be - would be a worldwide economic disaster; and China itself would suffer as much as anyone. The after-effects might be just as bad, if China's export markets suddenly start feeling mistrust towards it. Altogether, I can imagine no foreign-policy development more likely to stop the great Chinese growth in its tracks and endanger the great Chinese gamble.)