Rating Agency down grades US bonds.
Discussion
"One of China’s leading credit rating agencies has downgraded United States of America government debt in response to what it sees as deliberate devaluation of the dollar by quantitative easing and other means.
If China, now the second biggest economy in the world, stops buying US government bonds this could have a very negative effect on the global recovery. The Dagong Global Credit Rating Company analysis is highly critical of American attempts to borrow their way out of debt. It criticises competitive currency devaluation and predicts a “long-term recession”.
Dagong Global Credit says: “In order to rescue the national crisis, the US government resorted to the extreme economic policy of depreciating the U.S. dollar at all costs and this fully exposes the deep-rooted problem in the development and the management model of national economy.
“It would be difficult for the U.S. to find the correct path to revive the US economy should the US government fail to understand the source of the credit crunch and the development law of a modern credit economy, and stick to the mindset of traditional economic management model, which indicates that the US economic and social development will enter a long-term recession phase.”
The analysis concludes: “The potential overall crisis in the world resulting from the US dollar depreciation will increase the uncertainty of the U.S. economic recovery. Under the circumstances that none of the economic factors influencing the U.S. economy has turned better explicitly it is possible that the US will continue to expand the use of its loose monetary policy, damaging the interests the creditors.
“Therefore, given the current situation, the United States may face much unpredictable risks in solvency in the coming one to two years. Accordingly, Dagong assigns negative outlook on both local and foreign currency sovereign credit ratings of the United States.”
The bombshell follows fears about the outlook for bondholders expressed closer to home by fund managers, including the American giant Merrill Lynch. Max King, global investment strategist at Investec Asset Management, who passed the Chinese note to me said: “Dagong is well respected as an independent credit rating agency which takes a more conservative view than better-known American credit rating agencies."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100...
So what! It's not as if the US needs China to buy its bonds, it can simply buy them itself.
If China, now the second biggest economy in the world, stops buying US government bonds this could have a very negative effect on the global recovery. The Dagong Global Credit Rating Company analysis is highly critical of American attempts to borrow their way out of debt. It criticises competitive currency devaluation and predicts a “long-term recession”.
Dagong Global Credit says: “In order to rescue the national crisis, the US government resorted to the extreme economic policy of depreciating the U.S. dollar at all costs and this fully exposes the deep-rooted problem in the development and the management model of national economy.
“It would be difficult for the U.S. to find the correct path to revive the US economy should the US government fail to understand the source of the credit crunch and the development law of a modern credit economy, and stick to the mindset of traditional economic management model, which indicates that the US economic and social development will enter a long-term recession phase.”
The analysis concludes: “The potential overall crisis in the world resulting from the US dollar depreciation will increase the uncertainty of the U.S. economic recovery. Under the circumstances that none of the economic factors influencing the U.S. economy has turned better explicitly it is possible that the US will continue to expand the use of its loose monetary policy, damaging the interests the creditors.
“Therefore, given the current situation, the United States may face much unpredictable risks in solvency in the coming one to two years. Accordingly, Dagong assigns negative outlook on both local and foreign currency sovereign credit ratings of the United States.”
The bombshell follows fears about the outlook for bondholders expressed closer to home by fund managers, including the American giant Merrill Lynch. Max King, global investment strategist at Investec Asset Management, who passed the Chinese note to me said: “Dagong is well respected as an independent credit rating agency which takes a more conservative view than better-known American credit rating agencies."
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100...
So what! It's not as if the US needs China to buy its bonds, it can simply buy them itself.
Jackleman said:
It's not as if the Chinese haven't been playing silly buggers with their own currency either! Shows who is the economic superpower now though!
Yup. It's America. It's b
h slapping the Chinese to pay down their own debt.America is still the big daddy and it will be for many more years.
Crazy Torque said:
Why are they complaining here? If you're unhappy with a product, don't buy the fking thing!
How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
Ah, but they have a problem. They have a lot of cash but an unstable currency and nothing at all worth buying in their own country. They have no choice but to convert their dodgy renminbis into a proper currency. Right now the Euro is a dog's dinner due to the fact that half of the Eurozone is bankrupt and being financed by the other half, so that leaves the USD as all other currencies are either complete monkey or too illiquid, who want's Brazilian debt or Indian debt yet? No one without getting the right return for your risk.king thing!How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
So, the net result is that the Chinese have no choice but to buy USD and everytime they do the Americans say thank you very much and oh, by the way, we've just devalued that last basket you bought, but thanks very much.
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
DonkeyApple said:
Crazy Torque said:
Why are they complaining here? If you're unhappy with a product, don't buy the fking thing!
How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
Ah, but they have a problem. They have a lot of cash but an unstable currency and nothing at all worth buying in their own country. They have no choice but to convert their dodgy renminbis into a proper currency. Right now the Euro is a dog's dinner due to the fact that half of the Eurozone is bankrupt and being financed by the other half, so that leaves the USD as all other currencies are either complete monkey or too illiquid, who want's Brazilian debt or Indian debt yet? No one without getting the right return for your risk.king thing!How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
So, the net result is that the Chinese have no choice but to buy USD and everytime they do the Americans say thank you very much and oh, by the way, we've just devalued that last basket you bought, but thanks very much.
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
But it's not that simple. China also has America by the short and curlies. If they don't buy those bonds they American government can't pay it's bills.Fittster said:
DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
But it's not that simple. China also has America by the short and curlies. If they don't buy those bonds they American government can't pay it's bills.DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
A slightly different view from the East, and it's not all about those damn commies in China...http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC101110-0000073...
Influence waning, US tackles a new and intractable Asia
by Pankaj Mishra 05:55 AM Nov 10, 2010
United States President Barack Obama has embarked on his tour of four Asian countries (India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan), and you might expect him to have a full foreign-policy agenda.
Relations between Japan and China have deteriorated sharply following the Japanese seizure of a Chinese fishing boat. South Korea, another stalwart American client, has much to fear from the political transitions of its mysterious neighbour. The dispute in Kashmir clearly saps Pakistan's commitment to America's war in Afghanistan. After two cancelled trips to Indonesia, Mr Obama finally has the chance this week to commemorate his childhood in the country, and to re-engage his audience in the Muslim world.
However, Mr Obama insists on defining his mission in Asia in less than lofty terms. "We need to find," he wrote in an op-ed last week in the New York Times, "new customers in new markets for American-made goods."
This article - which went on about trade pacts with South Korea, Indonesia's chairmanship of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) and the importance of creating thousands of American jobs - had not a word to say about the political and military role of the United States in Asia.
Visiting India, Mr Obama has remained on message, talking about business deals and American jobs. He may be feeling a bit chastened after the setbacks in US midterm elections last week. Certainly he must stem growing unemployment as well as stimulate an economic recovery if he hopes to win a second term as president in 2012. And he may be trying to avoid the impression of being too preoccupied with abstruse foreign policy issues.
Still, Mr Obama's geopolitical diffidence acknowledges an undeniable fact: That America, weakened by the recession and successive military-diplomatic failures, can no longer dictate the course of events in Asia - a power it exercised, with often devastating effect, throughout the Cold War.
The oft-repeated story of China's rise is only part of the explanation for this. More importantly, mass politicisation and economic regionalism have emboldened many Asian countries that previously followed America's lead or cowered in its long shadow.
Almost everywhere in Asia, the US finds itself distrusted, outmanoeuvred and encircled by present allies as well as erstwhile proteges. Decades after getting rid of the shah, Iran's rulers can still draw upon strong anti-western passions as it bankrolls its proxies and friends in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Lebanon and Gaza.
The politicians and businessmen of Japan and South Korea can barely keep a lid on mass opposition to America's lingering Cold War presence in the region. Malaysia, from where I write, consistently "looked east" for its economic growth in the last three decades. Here, the east Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 stigmatised American policies long before the "Washington consensus" received its final rites elsewhere.
The shrinking of American influence is apparent even in India, whose political and business elites adore US wealth and power with an embarrassing intensity. India remained as protective of its farmers as ever at the stalled Doha round of talks. The Bush administration's generous gift of a nuclear deal has not made India much more hospitable to American investors and exporters.
As Mr Obama will find out, India has many more likely and rewarding partners in booming Asia than in the recession-hit west. Last year, India signed a major free-trade deal with Asean. Not surprisingly a columnist in The Star, Malaysia's leading newspaper in English, deemed the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Kuala Lumpur last week more important than the jaunt of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region at the same time.
A tangle of bilateral trade agreements underpins Asia's new economic unity. China and Asean countries already constitute the biggest free-trade zone in the world. Asian fears of China's rise, which the US keenly monitors, look minor beside the fact that China is now the largest export market for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, in addition to being India's biggest trading partner.
All this sounds a planet away from those Tea-Partying Americans who think the US can bomb its way out of any political and economic difficulties abroad. It now falls to Mr Obama to advance their education and he will most likely fail in this thankless task. But it cannot be said that this President, once a street kid in Jakarta, did not try, or that he ever imagined he could hustle into form the new and intractable Asia. The Guardian
Pankaj Mishra is author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet. This is an excerpt of a longer commentary.
Jimbeaux said:
Fittster said:
DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
But it's not that simple. China also has America by the short and curlies. If they don't buy those bonds they American government can't pay it's bills.Although at this stage I believe the USA still has enough of an advantage that they arent in dire trouble, they wont get away with playing the same hand for too long however.
Bing o said:
DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
A slightly different view from the East, and it's not all about those damn commies in China...http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC101110-0000073...
Influence waning, US tackles a new and intractable Asia
by Pankaj Mishra 05:55 AM Nov 10, 2010
United States President Barack Obama has embarked on his tour of four Asian countries (India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan), and you might expect him to have a full foreign-policy agenda.
Relations between Japan and China have deteriorated sharply following the Japanese seizure of a Chinese fishing boat. South Korea, another stalwart American client, has much to fear from the political transitions of its mysterious neighbour. The dispute in Kashmir clearly saps Pakistan's commitment to America's war in Afghanistan. After two cancelled trips to Indonesia, Mr Obama finally has the chance this week to commemorate his childhood in the country, and to re-engage his audience in the Muslim world.
However, Mr Obama insists on defining his mission in Asia in less than lofty terms. "We need to find," he wrote in an op-ed last week in the New York Times, "new customers in new markets for American-made goods."
This article - which went on about trade pacts with South Korea, Indonesia's chairmanship of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) and the importance of creating thousands of American jobs - had not a word to say about the political and military role of the United States in Asia.
Visiting India, Mr Obama has remained on message, talking about business deals and American jobs. He may be feeling a bit chastened after the setbacks in US midterm elections last week. Certainly he must stem growing unemployment as well as stimulate an economic recovery if he hopes to win a second term as president in 2012. And he may be trying to avoid the impression of being too preoccupied with abstruse foreign policy issues.
Still, Mr Obama's geopolitical diffidence acknowledges an undeniable fact: That America, weakened by the recession and successive military-diplomatic failures, can no longer dictate the course of events in Asia - a power it exercised, with often devastating effect, throughout the Cold War.
The oft-repeated story of China's rise is only part of the explanation for this. More importantly, mass politicisation and economic regionalism have emboldened many Asian countries that previously followed America's lead or cowered in its long shadow.
Almost everywhere in Asia, the US finds itself distrusted, outmanoeuvred and encircled by present allies as well as erstwhile proteges. Decades after getting rid of the shah, Iran's rulers can still draw upon strong anti-western passions as it bankrolls its proxies and friends in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Lebanon and Gaza.
The politicians and businessmen of Japan and South Korea can barely keep a lid on mass opposition to America's lingering Cold War presence in the region. Malaysia, from where I write, consistently "looked east" for its economic growth in the last three decades. Here, the east Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 stigmatised American policies long before the "Washington consensus" received its final rites elsewhere.
The shrinking of American influence is apparent even in India, whose political and business elites adore US wealth and power with an embarrassing intensity. India remained as protective of its farmers as ever at the stalled Doha round of talks. The Bush administration's generous gift of a nuclear deal has not made India much more hospitable to American investors and exporters.
As Mr Obama will find out, India has many more likely and rewarding partners in booming Asia than in the recession-hit west. Last year, India signed a major free-trade deal with Asean. Not surprisingly a columnist in The Star, Malaysia's leading newspaper in English, deemed the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Kuala Lumpur last week more important than the jaunt of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region at the same time.
A tangle of bilateral trade agreements underpins Asia's new economic unity. China and Asean countries already constitute the biggest free-trade zone in the world. Asian fears of China's rise, which the US keenly monitors, look minor beside the fact that China is now the largest export market for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, in addition to being India's biggest trading partner.
All this sounds a planet away from those Tea-Partying Americans who think the US can bomb its way out of any political and economic difficulties abroad. It now falls to Mr Obama to advance their education and he will most likely fail in this thankless task. But it cannot be said that this President, once a street kid in Jakarta, did not try, or that he ever imagined he could hustle into form the new and intractable Asia. The Guardian
Pankaj Mishra is author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet. This is an excerpt of a longer commentary.
Jimbeaux said:
This author obviously has a bias. Anyway, I have heard this same foretelling before.....about 30 years ago. It was wrong then, and as Donkey Apple may agree, it is wrong now.
As does any western writer. It cuts both ways. I'd be genuuinely interested to hear your thoughts on some of those comments in the article, rather than "it's biased"....
It is rather ironic that the Chinese are complaining about attempts by the US to devalue their currency when it is their own currency manipulation that has helped create the massive global imbalances that both created the 'great recession' and now prevent the world returning to sustainable economic growth.
JagLover said:
It is rather ironic that the Chinese are complaining about attempts by the US to devalue their currency when it is their own currency manipulation that has helped create the massive global imbalances that both created the 'great recession' and now prevent the world returning to sustainable economic growth.
Was it not the cheap renmimbi that western countries expoited in the credit binge of the past decade - taking out longer lines of credit to buy more and more consumer goods. As a juxtaposition, how many asian banks were bailed out in the past couple of years?My opinion is that Asian countries have learnt many lessons from the previous crisis' and money lending is a lot tighter here now. There is a risk that the growth many parts of Asia has seen is western pension money seeking returns, and that this will return to safer havens when economic growth returns to the US and Europe, but I'm not so sure that some kind of critical mass effect hasn't been reached.
China isn't the only country engaging in currency manipulation so to make out that their monetary policy is any better or worse than the US's is somewhat dissingenuous <sp>....
Guam said:
All posturing, as others have indicated the dollar is not actually weak comparatively (my raw materials are costing me 25% more due to exchange rates from 18 months ago) so where this "weakness" supposedly is escapes me?
Seems to me that the dolar (personally and from a US perspective) needs to be back up to $1.88 $1.95 to the pound before they can be accused of devaluation in a real sense (leaving the QE issue aside which is largely internal anyway).
As others have put far better than I could the Chinese in particular are being massively hypocritical in this regard.
Cheers
So the question is, do you go long Renmimbi?Seems to me that the dolar (personally and from a US perspective) needs to be back up to $1.88 $1.95 to the pound before they can be accused of devaluation in a real sense (leaving the QE issue aside which is largely internal anyway).
As others have put far better than I could the Chinese in particular are being massively hypocritical in this regard.
Cheers
Jimbeaux said:
Bing o said:
DonkeyApple said:
The point is that America has China by the short and curlies and we while we need to be aware that China is growing fast we must also note that most of the people in the media industry were Commies when they were younger and their beliefs die hard and all this talk of China being the new world superpower is just the machinations of their wet dreams.
A slightly different view from the East, and it's not all about those damn commies in China...http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC101110-0000073...
Influence waning, US tackles a new and intractable Asia
by Pankaj Mishra 05:55 AM Nov 10, 2010
United States President Barack Obama has embarked on his tour of four Asian countries (India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan), and you might expect him to have a full foreign-policy agenda.
Relations between Japan and China have deteriorated sharply following the Japanese seizure of a Chinese fishing boat. South Korea, another stalwart American client, has much to fear from the political transitions of its mysterious neighbour. The dispute in Kashmir clearly saps Pakistan's commitment to America's war in Afghanistan. After two cancelled trips to Indonesia, Mr Obama finally has the chance this week to commemorate his childhood in the country, and to re-engage his audience in the Muslim world.
However, Mr Obama insists on defining his mission in Asia in less than lofty terms. "We need to find," he wrote in an op-ed last week in the New York Times, "new customers in new markets for American-made goods."
This article - which went on about trade pacts with South Korea, Indonesia's chairmanship of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) and the importance of creating thousands of American jobs - had not a word to say about the political and military role of the United States in Asia.
Visiting India, Mr Obama has remained on message, talking about business deals and American jobs. He may be feeling a bit chastened after the setbacks in US midterm elections last week. Certainly he must stem growing unemployment as well as stimulate an economic recovery if he hopes to win a second term as president in 2012. And he may be trying to avoid the impression of being too preoccupied with abstruse foreign policy issues.
Still, Mr Obama's geopolitical diffidence acknowledges an undeniable fact: That America, weakened by the recession and successive military-diplomatic failures, can no longer dictate the course of events in Asia - a power it exercised, with often devastating effect, throughout the Cold War.
The oft-repeated story of China's rise is only part of the explanation for this. More importantly, mass politicisation and economic regionalism have emboldened many Asian countries that previously followed America's lead or cowered in its long shadow.
Almost everywhere in Asia, the US finds itself distrusted, outmanoeuvred and encircled by present allies as well as erstwhile proteges. Decades after getting rid of the shah, Iran's rulers can still draw upon strong anti-western passions as it bankrolls its proxies and friends in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Lebanon and Gaza.
The politicians and businessmen of Japan and South Korea can barely keep a lid on mass opposition to America's lingering Cold War presence in the region. Malaysia, from where I write, consistently "looked east" for its economic growth in the last three decades. Here, the east Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 stigmatised American policies long before the "Washington consensus" received its final rites elsewhere.
The shrinking of American influence is apparent even in India, whose political and business elites adore US wealth and power with an embarrassing intensity. India remained as protective of its farmers as ever at the stalled Doha round of talks. The Bush administration's generous gift of a nuclear deal has not made India much more hospitable to American investors and exporters.
As Mr Obama will find out, India has many more likely and rewarding partners in booming Asia than in the recession-hit west. Last year, India signed a major free-trade deal with Asean. Not surprisingly a columnist in The Star, Malaysia's leading newspaper in English, deemed the Indian Prime Minister's visit to Kuala Lumpur last week more important than the jaunt of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the region at the same time.
A tangle of bilateral trade agreements underpins Asia's new economic unity. China and Asean countries already constitute the biggest free-trade zone in the world. Asian fears of China's rise, which the US keenly monitors, look minor beside the fact that China is now the largest export market for Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, in addition to being India's biggest trading partner.
All this sounds a planet away from those Tea-Partying Americans who think the US can bomb its way out of any political and economic difficulties abroad. It now falls to Mr Obama to advance their education and he will most likely fail in this thankless task. But it cannot be said that this President, once a street kid in Jakarta, did not try, or that he ever imagined he could hustle into form the new and intractable Asia. The Guardian
Pankaj Mishra is author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tibet. This is an excerpt of a longer commentary.
If the Eurozone wasn't a mess then there would be a very good case for China switching to a stronger Euro bias over the USD but thae fact remains that the USD is still the global currency and the US people are still the largest purchasers of pointless tat in the West.
China's defence to this weekness is to secure as much mineral wealth overseas as possible as we have seen in Africa where the Chinese are the largest ethnic group on the continent when viewed on a tribal basis. Australia's booming economy is another side effect of China's medium term strategy.
Crazy Torque said:
Why are they complaining here? If you're unhappy with a product, don't buy the fking thing!
How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
You can't underestimate just how much money there is to be invested and USD and US debt is still one of the largest and most stable markets.king thing!How hard is it to 'not buy' something?
I've no desire to buy anyone's bonds, and find better, sometimes obscene returns in (the right) art and property!
There is not enough art on the planet to make it a viable option and the Chinese are already heavily invested in commercial property accross the globe and again there isn't much more they can invest in without pushing prices beyond their profitablity and creating a bubble.
sidewayz said:
Interesting
What makes their currency unstable?
The fact that to all intents and purposes they are still a 3rd world country living in fear of collective social unrest.What makes their currency unstable?
Combined with the fact that exports to the West comprise an enormous element of their wealth, so if Europe and America stop buying their exports they could be profoundly effected.
I don't think anyone out there is argueing that China will not become the main economic super power but it isn't going to happen tomorrow or later this afternoon as some of our journalists like to promote in their writings. We have to be at least a generation or more away from China being a genuinely stable and balanced economy.
We are in for another 30 years + of posturing between China and the West.
DonkeyApple said:
Until China has a large and solid middle class that buys their own manufacturing tat then it is a country highly reliant on the West, in particular the US.
If the Eurozone wasn't a mess then there would be a very good case for China switching to a stronger Euro bias over the USD but thae fact remains that the USD is still the global currency and the US people are still the largest purchasers of pointless tat in the West.
China's defence to this weekness is to secure as much mineral wealth overseas as possible as we have seen in Africa where the Chinese are the largest ethnic group on the continent when viewed on a tribal basis. Australia's booming economy is another side effect of China's medium term strategy.
It's not just China - you also have Malaysia, Indonesia, HK, Singapore, Japan, Korea and India etc who all have growing consumer/middle classes. Heck, Luis Vuitton even sells stuff to the elite in Myanmar. I know LV is not chinese, but my point is that there is a growing consumer base in Asia, none of whom are particularly enamoured by the US. If the Eurozone wasn't a mess then there would be a very good case for China switching to a stronger Euro bias over the USD but thae fact remains that the USD is still the global currency and the US people are still the largest purchasers of pointless tat in the West.
China's defence to this weekness is to secure as much mineral wealth overseas as possible as we have seen in Africa where the Chinese are the largest ethnic group on the continent when viewed on a tribal basis. Australia's booming economy is another side effect of China's medium term strategy.
From what I have seen, the Asean countries in particular are growing despite of lack of demand from the west - how long this will last is yet to be seen, but to see this as China vs the West is surprisingly short-sighted, IMHO.
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