Jade Queen

China Becoming a 'Middle-Class' Nation

I wonder if we know how much of Chinese territory has been carefully analyzed for resources. Could it be there are more possible resources than we know of yet?

If China decides to change agriculture to less resource-hungry ways, they could probably produce much more. I saw few plantings of trees or use of windbreaks. Consequently evaporation is great, and substantial water is required. I did see clover used as opposed to grass, a practice that just appears to be starting in the U.S. Careful attention to the work of Vandana Shiva and Masanobu Fukuoka could improve productivity. One of Fukuoka's rice strains is already used there, from what I understand. It requires less water and less fertilizer than conventional strains.

What food-production I saw was monocropping. So much canola that I was dazzled, but dismayed. Restaurant food was largely meat, except at a restaurant connected to the Chinese opera and another in a hotel that served many Japanese visitors, in Beijing. There, the vegetables were very good and not an after-thought.

China is so huge, and parts seem rather desolate and sparsely populated, in contrast to the huge cities. I think it's difficult to know what potentials are not even counted in the reports that get relied on.

Disclosure: I own STP, a Chinese solar play.

'Bubble-Mania' in Shanghai Spreads to Global Markets

MIT economist Yasheng Huang has a fairly unique analysis of the Chinese economy, stretching from the 70's and processed with the usual intricate and unusual MIT data sets. How he managed to get the information must be a story in itself. I wonder if he is allowed back in.

I would be interested to hear what others think of his ideas. He's easy to search.

What I conclude from reading reviews of his work is that joint ventures end up having enough cachet in China to not get busted and looted with their founders disappeared.

If an individual peasant does well with a food product, he is going to get plundered unless he makes himself into a joint venture before he gets whacked.

I'm wondering how to make a hooky phrase out of this pattern.

How about something like, "Get your material and intangible off-shore capital before you need it!" I know that's not very good, but the challenge is out there. I'd love to hear some other ones.

This is likely a pattern in most places. Being honored in a foreign land is a way to get enough cachet to make bubba think twice before whacking you.

Lest anyone think I am saying this is different in the U.S. from China, I am not. Just take a look at incarceration rates. If you are not wealthy and connected in the U.S., you can easily disappear. If you have made friends with people whose credibility exists in official spheres and preferably off-shore as well, you probably won't disappear forever, but you can advance the return on equity of somebody in the meantime, now that we have private prisons and strong prison unions.

The story of Katherine Austin Fitts is instructive in this regard.

I am not selling out everything Chinese since I read of Yasheng Huang's analysis, but I am feeling far more cautious about China now than I did before.