The worst-case scenario, for both the government and business, would be an economic crash that reduced the rate of annual GDP growth to below 5%. This could lead to a rise in political instability (and possibly even regime change), as the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party rests on its ability to deliver rapid economic [...]

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“China’s dependence on export-led growth … is unsustainable over time,” Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, argues in a forthcoming article in the journal the International Economy. He cites a recent IMF analysis saying that for China to maintain its trend of 8% growth annually with the current pattern of trade, it would have [...]

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Big on spit and polish and parades but short on experience, new technology and force coordination, China’s military has far to go before its bite begins to approach its increasingly loud, and for some fearsome, bark.
China’s military bluster camouflages toothless bite | Reuters

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China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) remains in session. As usual, the meeting has provided Beijing an opportunity to highlight the past year’s successes and lay out the problems that lie ahead. On the surface at least, China has shown remarkable resilience in the face of global economic crisis. It has posted enviable gross domestic product [...]

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China now has better fighter jets than Taiwan, according to a military report by the island’s defence ministry as the air force Monday renewed its bid to obtain new F-16s from the United States.
Of the three types of fighter jets in Taiwan’s air force, only the F-16A/Bs have a slight edge over the Chinese aircraft, [...]

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More importantly, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is gunning for a paradigm shift in geopolitics, namely, new rules of the game whereby the fast-rising quasi-superpower will be playing a more forceful role. In particular, Beijing has served notice that it won’t be shy about playing hardball to safeguard what it claims to be “core [...]

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Recent statements by Chinese military officials are raising concerns among U.S. analysts that the communist government in Beijing is shifting its oft-stated “peaceful rise” policy toward an aggressive, anti-U.S. posture.
The most recent sign appeared with the publication of a government-approved book by Senior Col. Liu Mingfu that urges China to “sprint” toward becoming the world’s [...]

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Editor’s note: China’s Bubble is a four-part multimedia series on an emerging threat to China’s booming economy — a residential real estate bubble, particularly in the business and finance hub of Shanghai. The series also looks at the underlying causes of the bubble, and examines how one unique social custom is driving prices even higher.
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Among other things, China refuses to grant it island status, and refers to it instead as an atoll, reef or simply a rock. By doing so, China hopes to throttle back Japan’s plan to create an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) there. The dispute over Okinotori, which Japan calls Okinotorishima, persists because it involves strategic concerns [...]

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China’s hidden borrowing may push government debt to 96 percent of gross domestic product next year, increasing the risk of a financial crisis in the world’s third-biggest economy, Professor Victor Shih said.
“The worst case is a pretty large-scale financial crisis around 2012,” said Shih, a political economist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who spent [...]

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