One does NOT need to exaggerate Chinese power when one sees ever-increasing foreign exchange reserves of China, projected to hit 5 trillion dollars in 4 years.

One does NOT have to exaggerate Chinese power when one sees China buying all kind of natural resources world wide and investing in Africa more than World Bank.

One is NOT exaggerating when one sees China’s massive investments in Latin America.

One can see China using its massive forex reserves to buy not just US treasury bills but European and Japanese government debt as well.

One can NOT ignore the massive trade surpluses that China rakes up year in and year out not just against US and EU but even against Japan and India.

Only a blind can willfully ignore such ever-increasing unchecked Chinese economic might that China will use not just against its own possible economic downturn forecast by Kindred Winecoff and Nouriel Roubini but to rearrange world’s financial and economic order, ending four centuries of Western domination.

That is what China is now. China is weak per capita but very strong cumulatively.

In another twenty year it may creep into the bottom of developed world in per capita income. By then it will be even more influential due to its size.

There is NO way to check Chinese economic power since China’s resurgence is due to the world becoming socially more advanced.
Do you what to push opium into China by force again? Do you what a Japan to launch an attack on China again? Do you want the Western world to regress to virulent racism again?

After the developed Western world has stopped being virulently racist to China (and the rest of the non-white developing world ) after WWII, Chinese resurgence is predictable. The Chinese have had a long tradition of entrepreneurial drive; now as the Western world is more socially progressive and has stopped treating the Chinese like dirt, the Chinese are therefore advancing.

The Chinese is winning in capitalism.

The Chinese are a very serious economic challenge to the USA. Stop talking about checking, more about out-competing. It doesn’t look good for the USA now; our religiosity is drowning us in the Middle East.

"ending four centuries of Western domination."

Domination or not, Asia is going to have the greatest GNP later this century.

The West will likely have high per capita GNP.

The West will not longer dominate. Live with it.

Dan,

I hate picking on you, but your ignorance about China just knows no bounds. And now instead of using your own words or analysis, you are using others'.

Roubini's analysis is essentially worthless, like he really has enough intelligence to see what China will be like in 2013. And by the way, "To avoid this fate, China needs to save less, reduce fixed investment, cut net exports as a share of GDP, and boost the share of consumption. ", Duh, that's exactly what China has been working on since last year. Check China's next 5 year plan, it's all about domestic consumption, spend, spend, spend......

Do yourself a favor, don't get yourself mixed up with the rest of these FP China-haters, learn to start recognizing China as the future power and instead of wasting time arguing how a broken down West is still, relatively, stronger and sustainable than the rising East....who cares, it's who will lead the world that counts, and it sure ain't going to be the West.

Predictable.

China's "rise" has been the same kind of Rise as happens to a big family from a bad section of town that gradually becomes phenomonally successful and moves to the wealthy part of town.

The world has one less hugely populated, impossibly poor country. That's a good thing.

But China's rise to peerage of America, or even global primacy was always a figment of certain individuals imaginations. They took the so called "damage" of the Bush years too seriously. They overvalued the importance of china's domestic development. Heck, maybe the realists just became terrified at the prospect of an America that could remain internationally supreme indefinitely, thus making their jobs a boring defense of the status quo.

I for the life of me, will never understand how people were so comprehensively robbed of their common sense.

So China puts people in space and wants to go to the Moon? Congratulations, welcome to Project Mercury China... America isn't going to the moon or mars at the minute mostly by choice. But China? They are touted as some great space power for something that American private firm SpaceX will probably do in 2012 on their own.

So China is building an aircraft carrier. Congratulations. Welcome to 1961, China. The Enterprise is about to be laid up, having godfathered about 10 other Nimitz carriers, five other non-nuclear super carriers, and two in construction Ford Class carriers. But no... in this media environment, one Chinese aircraft carrier suddenly means China is on its way to having a potent, proven blue water Navy.

So China develops a "Carrier Killer". This one's my favorite, because the usual suspects got to take America down a notch by inferring that now our mighty carriers were useless, completely neglecting the fact that the launch platforms for the Carrier Killers would be target number one the US based Prompt Global Strike, which will be deployed around the time of the first Ford-Class becoming active, and the rail gun tested just last week by the Navy could shred a ballistic missile at any trajectory in point-defense mode (in fact, it is being developed explicitly for this).

It's just so silly. Maybe America's PR is just that inept, because the relative-power game has generated a lot of hay, but not changed the fundamental reality.

The Communist Party which has managed such a remarkable transformation of a such large country in few decades, it has certain skills under it's belt. So it will not be easy to bet against the Party.

But then again same was the case with Soviets. They had clearly beaten West in early days of modern Technology and Science, but still in the end lost. Though China is publishing lot more Science Papers, the whole enchilada of taking from Basic Science to Technology to Start-ups to Successful Mega Corporations; it is quite behind in this messy process.

To get impressed by 5 Trillion Foreign Exchange Reserves and to ignore negative consequences of that is not smart. Where is the deep Bond Market in China or in Asia (apart from Japan)? Where are trails of working Legal System and Capital Controls working for decades? Just few days back NYT published details of shenanigans of Chinese Shares Market.

Key thing is how the internal Class Struggle addressed. America has it's own Class Struggle - those who want Tax Cuts for Rich to those who want Welfare State. In China it is with those who have short term vested interests in 50% of GDP going into investment (Export Lobby, Construction Companies, etc.) against rest of China which would be looking for longer term stability and prosperity as well as those enterpruners and businesses who are interested in building industries which do not exist in China today. (SW industry is one glaring example where China and for that matter even rest of the world does not compete with USA that well.)

And finally, is it possible to nurture and develop tomorrow's industries with Communist Party imposed restrains? Theoretically yes. But chances are that as Humanity is more 'consuming' on cerebral side, lack of 'freedom' in basic sense as well as missing opportunity to put someone in government by your own votes; all that is likely to impede further progress.

Will it be in 2013? That is hard to predict. As Communist Party comes to face this turbulence and attempts to manage these internal tensions, can it loose the control? Absolutely, that is possible. Even with Internet back outs, can China kill millions like Great Leap Forward fiasco in today's times? That seems hard.

My bet is - lot of Chinese themselves will start realizing that they are going to 'hit a wall' unless they start working on removing Monopoly of Chinese Communist Party. Within the Party there will be power brokers who would want to expand their influence not necessarily by repression, but as an opposing faction to these existing repressive tendencies. These Reformers can argue and appeal to Chinese Public that such repressive policies otherwise (assuming those have crossed a critical threshold) are going to result in break up of Chinese Republic. What you are talking here is attempt to sell political freedom as more authentic Nationalism as well as a practical solution to preserver the Chinese Republic. One thing with Chinese Society is very clear - implanting and nurturing of Chinese Nationalism has made it as the single most 'organizing principle' for that Society. China is probably most Nationalistic Society in the world (with already weakened influence of Religion by atheist Communism over decades).

In other words, don't undermine Chinese Nationalism. They may even cross the line of granting political freedom to people to protect this Chinese Nationalism. Turbulence in Economy - those all are vagaries of a growing nation.

"First, from an economic standpoint, a recessionary China eliminates a vital engine of global economic growth."

This is utter nonsense. China is a net exporter, reminiscent of Japan from 1950-1990. A drop-off in Chinese growth would create short-term shock for commodities-exporting economies like Australia, but it would (like Japan's never-ending "rebalancing" process) likely be expansionary for other nations like the US, which would benefit from a more expensive RMB and contractions in its trade balance with China. Even when the voracious, commodity-consuming Asian Tigers slowed in the 1990s, the shock to commodity-exporting Russia was surprisingly brief: it defaulted on its debt in 1998, but resumed 7-8% growth within 5 years.

Oh, Marty Martel, I can always count on you to be a blindly ignorant as you accuse others of being:

"One does NOT need to exaggerate Chinese power when one sees ever-increasing foreign exchange reserves of China, projected to hit 5 trillion dollars in 4 years."

So what does China do with these reserves? They cannot be spent internally in China. In fact, they are currently being burned on worthless investments like Greek and Spanish debt. Vast forex reserves were also of little value to 1980s Japan and 1920s US.

"One does NOT have to exaggerate Chinese power when one sees China buying all kind of natural resources world wide and investing in Africa more than World Bank."

China's economy is heavily skewed toward investment, which requires large amounts of imported commodities. China itself is bereft of many of the resources it requires to keep the investment engine humming. Its need to invest and corral ever-pricier resources is a sign of weakness, not strength.

"One is NOT exaggerating when one sees China’s massive investments in "Latin America.""

This shows that China has competitive businesses, esp. in the natural resources sector. I do not see this as a sign either way of national strength or weakness. Is the US's massive investment in the Gulf of Mexico a sign of power?

"One can see China using its massive forex reserves to buy not just US treasury bills but European and Japanese government debt as well."

It already buys this sort of debt. China contributes to the US and European (except Germany) account deficits automatically: it does not have a calculated lending strategy, and these states are not reliant on China as a "banker." A contraction in Chinese purchases of debt automatically means that China's account surplus declines and its investment engine (which is artificially maintained and drives all current growth in China) will flounder.

"One can NOT ignore the massive trade surpluses that China rakes up year in and year out not just against US and EU but even against Japan and India."

I would ask you why is you are so in awe of a trade surplus. It is a mundane policy decision that reflects China's inability to purchase enough goods to run a trade deficit.

"Only a blind can willfully ignore such ever-increasing unchecked Chinese economic might that China will use not just against its own possible economic downturn forecast by Kindred Winecoff and Nouriel Roubini but to rearrange world’s financial and economic order, ending four centuries of Western domination"

Sorry, but that's a lot of hot air. First of all, the world has not been divided into discrete periods of "Western" and "Eastern" domination. The West has been powerful ever since the days of Rome and Athens. Historical GDP figures pointing to large Chinese and Indian economies in antiquity do not fully account for the fact that "China" and "India" are not coherent nation-states that have had the same territorial integrity throughout their history.

I used to write resumes for chineese workers, they were rather hospitable

People have been predicting the demise of China since 1989. Although China has yet to encounter major economic or political melt down, this will certainly not stop the people from continuing to predict China's fall. Afterall, the neocons have successfully demonstrated in this country that if you continued to make false predictions year after year, country after country, there are still plenty of sheeple who will continue to believe you because people are more loyal to ideologies than facts.

If the China declinists are right, they should certainly deserve some credit for being insightful. Of course, it also means that people better embrace for a major global recession in 2 years. On the other hand, if the China declinists are wrong, and some have been wrong for years, will they be shamed and ridiculed for being wrong for so long? Probably not.

"Hysteria about Chinese power also provokes confusion and anger in China as Beijing is being asked to accept a burden it is not yet prepared to shoulder. China, after all, ranks 89th in the 2010 U.N. Human Development Index, just behind Turkmenistan and the Dominican Republic (the United States is fourth)." The way you cite the Human Development Index here, I think, ignores the very basic fact that the HDI is a 'per capita' ranking.

You point out yourself that the US is only fourth on this ranking. Wouldn't we accept that a higher placed country, for instance a Norway or a Switzerland but MULTIPLIED by roughly 100 would be a global economic force to be reckoned with? If the answer is yes, then comparing China's level of development with that of Turkmenistan doesn't really tell us anything - a more apt comparison for China would be something like 270 (!) Turkmenistans or 130 Dominican Republics. The huge economic power a country of this size wields is still daunting in many ways, developed or not.

In this light, re: China "being asked to accept a burden it is not yet prepared to shoulder": Them's the breaks I guess, when you're a country of 1.3 billion people.