China Watch

[AiA in Atlanta]

Chinese food security is what is really behind this. The Chinese want to have a place to grow their own food when the domestic food supply becomes too toxic to eat:

China Condemns Japan Leader on Visit to Ethiopia

China's diplomatic assault on Japan's prime minister moved to another continent Wednesday, as China's top official at the African Union called the Japanese leader a troublemaker just after his three-country visit to Africa.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Ivory Coast, Mozambique and Ethiopia over the last week, pledging hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and trying to shore up relations on a continent where China has made deep inroads in recent years.

Abe's Africa trip follows his visit last month to a World War II shrine in Tokyo that China views as a memorial to war criminals who assaulted the Chinese people.

Xie Xiayoan, China's Ambassador to Ethiopia and its envoy to the African Union, said Abe's visit to the Yasakuni Shrine was offensive and he called the prime minister a "troublemaker" in Asia.

The Chinese disdain for Abe's visit here went past the political level. On Sunday Chinese activists brawled with Japanese embassy security in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, as they took pictures of the embassy and protested Abe's visit.

Chinese activists had collected signatures from among the thousands of Chinese nationals living in Ethiopia and tried to submit it to the embassy to protest the shrine visit.

Eyewitnesses in Addis Ababa told The Associated Press that Chinese construction workers erected a sign or banner that said "Sankaku Island belongs to us," a reference to disputed islands both nations claim. The witnesses, who insisted on anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said the sign was taken down before Abe's convoy passed by.

Abe on Tuesday told reporters that Japan is in Africa as part of his "strategic diplomacy" program. Abe announced $20 million in funds for the U.N. mission in South Sudan; he also noted that Japan has deployed peacekeepers to support the mission there.

[AiA in Atlanta]

In five years, China's shadow banks have increased credit from 120 to 190 percent of GDP—a bigger run-up than the U.S. housing bubble.

Any bets as to what will happen next?

[Chard]

Might force the US Fed to do what we should have done a decade ago and force a revalue of the Yuan relative to the US Dollar. That could have some pretty goddamn profound effects for a few years on not just the Chinese economy, but the global economy. If that happens, best case it's a small rise in the Yuan and Beijing can somehow manage to mittigate inflation rates. Worst case, the People's Republic of China fucking implodes. Be a pain in the ass for cheap manufacturing in a lot of areas until other manufacturing can be established elsewhere, and there's the possibility that the current regime could say "fuck all y'all" and do something dumb involving their nuclear deterrent force (it wouldn't be at all out of character given Chinese history).

[AiA in Atlanta]

China is building infrastructure and even ghost cities but none of it is being paid for. US credit only went up to 40% of GDP in 5 years before its housing bubble popped ...

[Rorschach]

Still watching China..? they now want to build a rail tunnel to the US mainland.