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What exactly are you talking about? I'm in China now and I don't see any signs of any imminent collapse. On the contrary, China's a lot more vibrant, thriving, and optimistic these days than most other places in the world. When I walk down a Shanghai street, it even makes Manhattan look slow and boring by comparison. On a fundamental economic basis, China's got all the ingredients to become an economic superpower -- labor, land, infrastructure, brains, capitalist culture, etc. Sure, China's economic path won't be a straight line up, but in developing economies do usually grow faster than already-developed countries because the big per-capita gap between these two classes of countries causes aggregate economic demand in developing countries to be that much more greater. As we speak, China is the #1 market in the world for cell phones, will hit #2 in PC's by next year, is #1 in elevators, light bulbs, air conditioners, refridgerators, and is predicted to be #2 in cars by 2010 and #1 by 2020. Ask any major corproation today where their fastest growing market is and it's likely to be China. The First World's markets for many products are already saturated so China's growing demand is the best thing in the world.

Re #34

If you asked the same questions to people in Thailand and Malaysia around 1994 and 1995, they would have answered the same way. More vibrant than ever. No sign of any danger in horizon. I have no doubt that things look the way you described in the streets of Shanhai. That was the way it looked in Seoul in 1996 and in NYC in 1999. All the troubles were behind. Only the bright future. But I knew that Korea was having some problems starting 1994. It was the matter of time. It hit eventually, in the way worse than I expected. I thought that America will be in trouble after 1996's Greenspan's "Irrational Exhuberance speech. Looks can be deceiving. It does not take a financial genius to figure it out as long as one is not blinded by hypes.