There is a “consensus opinion” – if that term still has any validity post-ClimateGate – that the booming Chinese economy is going to pull the world out of the second dip in our current global economic maelstrom. One scoop or two? Just one, please, sheh-sheh.
But for China to boom, they must be doing sensible things, economically speaking. Are they? Take a look at the images Time magazine shows us of Ordos. I had a Brazilian once joke to me about his own country: “Brazil. The country of the future. And it always will be!”
Ordos, the Chinese city of the future. Caveat emptor.
The full story can be found here. The full image gallery can be found here.
Commentary:
A centrally-planned economy as large as China’s is doomed to mediocrity, or outright failure. I expect it will take a while for the cracks in the Chinese “porcelain economy” to really start showing up, and for the bloom to come off the Mandarin Rose, as, compared to the imploding western world, the managed Chinese economy will look robust. I need to find the next “big” Chinese event. In Dec 2006 I used the close of the Beijing Olympics to time my call of the deflationary crash as Fall 08. There will be another event, and another crash, unless economic freedom is allowed free rein in China, and that don’t look very likely to me.