China. China China. ChinaChinaChina for the China

China.

Comical. After reading that article all I want to do is buy FXI.

What’s comical about it?

That article has too many words. Can someone please summarize it with an animated gif, please?

April 15, WW3

Stratfor Summary:

China is in big trouble. America is in control. Chinese system sucks. American system rocks.

Three-fourths right; they actually didn’t criticize the Chinese system. In fact, they had high praise for it: “Given their history and geographical constraints, we would be hard-pressed to come up with a better plan were we to be selected as Party general secretary for a day. Beijing is well aware of all these problems and more and is attempting to mitigate the damage and repair the system.”

Does Stratfor seem like a bit of an American cheerleader to anyone else?

I don’t know if it’s that as much as that almost all of the news/opinion/commentary on the USA in relation to China within the past 18 months has been so universally negative towards the USA. So for an article to come out that’s saying flat-out that the USA has the upper hand and that China is in trouble is jarring.

The comparison to Japan is insightful, but I think China’s problems now run much deeper than Japan’s did in the 90’s. China is a huge bubble right now.

Most of the scholarly commentary I’ve seen in the last few years has been making essentially those points - remember when everybody thought Japan was going to take over everything, China’s stability issues, etc.

Interesting. I think the word “scholarly” is the key … I think what most people hear about are from “pundits” and “experts,” not actual intellectual scholarship.

Peter Zeihand is an “expert”.

China.

Nor is the linked article scholarly research. Thus, it’s interesting to see the idea finally hit the mainstream, which has been so unanimously flowing in the opposite direction.

Excellent article.

Thank you, I was going to go back through the Youtube thread where I posted it originally but I was too lazy.

It still says it sucks. Just because it says it’s the best thing they could have done, they still also say it sucks. So the summary was correct, just lacked their explanation of how they can conclude China’s system sucks, when it has been an economic powerhouse for the last couple of decades.

The article may be right, but it also seems to be pandering to the kind of people who read Stratfor: telling them that, yes, America is superior.

That’s pretty much what I took away from it: kind of a “Don’t worry, we can step on China’s throat whenever we want to.” Still there is some merit to the points brought up. While the U.S. certainly does a lot of economic muscle it can flex in China’s direction, the author’s definition of “… manageable pain on the U.S. side” would sure be interesting to read. It’s a shame that wasn’t explored a little more in depth.

The article also assumes that China ceasing to buy US bonds would evoke only a perfectly rational response among other bond-holders and buyers–when it could also induce a self-reinforcing panic.

The article, whatever one thinks about Stratfor itself, seems rational; at the very least, it has some good observations. I thought the article about Iran it linked to (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100301_thinking_about_unthinkable_usiranian_deal?fn=3815816279) was also interesting, as it’s one of the few I’ve seen that actually puts forward the idea of a making a deal with Tehran, something that I would agree is probably the only reasonable way out of the box we’re in with them right now.