A new online briefing from a high-level panel of experts, including a former director of the CIA, unmasks the growing threat posed by an increasingly troubled China.
After 30 years of annual GPD growth of up to 10 percent, the world’s most populous nation is facing mounting economic challenges that could have a significant impact on the United States as well.
The bottom line of the panel discussion: China’s economy is at serious risk – and the entire world will feel the blow both economically and even militarily.
“I spend as much time fretting about Chinese failure as I do about Chinese success, about China being weak as opposed to being strong,” says panelist Michael Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a retired 4-star general.
LIGNET.com, Newsmax’s global intelligence and forecasting service, gathered the experts to discuss the future of China and the “sweet and sour” U.S.-China relationship — as panelist Jon Huntsman, former U.S. ambassador to China, puts it — as new Chinese leader Xi Jinping takes the reins of power.
The 4-member panel is moderated by Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University and a former CNN Washington bureau chief.
The main focus was on the world’s second-largest economy and how China might respond to growing problems in sustaining its amazing growth — and the possibility of escalating tensions between the United States and China.
Ironically, the panel gathered soon after the Shanghai composite stock market hit its lowest level in 3 1/2 years.
“While it’s been an incredible 30 years, the easy part is over,” says panelist Steven Cortes, founder of the market research consulting firm Veracruz LLC and a frequent contributor on CNBC.
“The easy part was exploiting seemingly endless cheap Chinese labor. They are running out of that labor now as the demographic tide starts to turn against China. Wage costs are accelerating dramatically. They’re losing the one advantage that they’ve really exploited to an incredible degree. So what do they do next?”
Said former Utah Gov. Huntsman: “You can only take the investment-led export machine so far, and it has run its course.”
And Hayden points out that the Chinese people will tolerate the communist leadership only as long as the economy keeps growing.
More @ Newsmax
Worldwide economic plunge. Probably Bush's fault.
ReplyDeleteWhen is that right wing, gun loving, baby killer ever going to get put out of office........?:)
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