[amchugh]

If anyone here has read Navarro's book the coming China wars, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

[raybbr]

There has been a flaw in our thinking: the belief that the economy decides everything. If the economy is booming, we thought, political stability will follow; if the economy is booming, we hoped, people will have enough to eat and live contented lives; if the economy is booming, we believed, there will be money everywhere and materialism will be enough to stave off the looming crises posed by our population, resources, environment, society, economy and culture. But now it seems this will not be enough. When these crises really hit us, a little economic success will not be nearly enough to deal with them.

Pretty good description of what I call "super-capitalism". It will crush everything in its path for the sake of the monetary unit.

[Always Right]

They made the same predictions about the US. We only had a 10 year oil supply back in 1970 and there was no way we could produce enough food.

[Post Toasties]

The author is correct in many regards - the Chinese shouldn’t believe that they can retrace the same dilatory path to environmentalism that the US did, if for no other reason that they would have approximately seven times the population (creating proportionately more pollution in actually less real estate) doing so. Some of the figures given in this article regarding the reduction in arable land are exaggerated hopefully, or China will be in for some really tough times no matter what it does.