Three Sensible Articles About China via Jim Fallows

While I don’t like everything that Jim Fallows does, he is one of the rare people – not just Westerners – who really seems to have a grasp of the complexity that is today’s China. [br]

While I don’t like everything that Jim Fallows does, he is one of the rare people – not just Westerners – who really seems to have a grasp of the complexity that is today’s China. [br]

While I don’t like everything that Jim Fallows does, he is one of the rare people – not just Westerners – who really seems to have a grasp of the complexity that is today’s China. [br]

In this brief piece for the Atlantic Monthly, of which he is the National Correspondent, he does something similar to what we do at Economy Watch in our new In the News section:

give people a number of different media items that illuminate what we consider to be significant aspects of the current world political economic scene.

And, as everyone in the world knows, there is no single country more crucial to the FUTURE of that scene than China,

about which one hears the widest possible range of views on what is going to happen,

all the way from a stunning crash – that will put Asia in as bad shape as the US and Europe –

through a “soft landing” where it will slow down and may even stagnate a bit, but won’t crash hard, as the whole world did during Black September 2008,

to the total optimists who argue that China has figured it all out, and will be able to continue its growth despite the Great Recession in the rest of the world.

HIS brief introduction is precisely the kind of thing we think should be done,

especially in the fast-changing world of Web-based journalistic analysis of which we like to think EconomyWatch.com is one of the best examples 😉

[quote]

• China is big, exciting, fast growing, absolutely worth taking seriously, and nothing like the house of cards or hollow achievement some skeptics have suggested;
• BUT ALSO it is chaotic, slapdash, full of poor people and feuding factions, very assured in some ways and nervous in others, and all in all nothing like the nonstop juggernaut or illustration of perfectly effective governance we hear about from people who’ve taken a quick look; 
• AND ALSO it has surprisingly few elements of built-in, unavoidable, zero-sum conflict with the United States and is nothing like the looming military menace some people like to fantasize about;
• BUT THEN AGAIN but it has many obvious differences of values and interests from the United States and unattractive elements (as of course do we) that aren’t going away soon.

Is China strong? Yes. Is it weak? Yes. Is it opening up? In most ways Yes. Is it closing down? In some ways Yes. Is it a friend? In many ways. Is it a potential foe? In some ways. If you read these pieces you’ll see what I mean.

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With OUR thanks to Jacob M, for pointing us in this direction 😉