China,

The Americans don't seem to realise that the country is in terminal decline. It won't happen overnight (although it's possible it will happen far more quickly than anyone realises) but China is likely to become the most dominant power in our children's lifetimes.

I fear that when the penny drops it may not be pretty. I hope for better and actually view a century where China is the post important power very positively for lots of reasons. No one country or civilization is dominant for ever.

But I've only been to Beijing. At least recently only Beijing.

Sorry I meant appreciate. I absolutely get what you are saying and really hope it all goes smoothly. I can just see a less rosy alternative. Tbh the op was probably right that any first stone will be cast by a declining west.

Interesting about the two thirds satisfaction, guess I was imagining it more polarised. It has looked it when I have been there.

buy their imports I mean, not 'by'.

The Yuan/renminbi will eventually become the reserve currency - some say by 2015 - and China's power increase. The way things are going - and the plans are that - Shanghai will eventually overtake New York as the world's most important financial centre, possibly by 2020. HSBC has estimated that by 2013-15 at least half of China's trade with other developing countries will be in the renminbi. Chinese companies will by their imports and sell their exports in their own currency. We are perhaps looking at a new Chinese world order.

The yuan will appreciate rather than devalue. Not even China can go on keeping their currency artificially low indefinitely. But I think they will string it along as long as they can.

It's not in China's interests to dump dollars. They are one of the biggest holders of US government debt and it's their largest export market. Put bluntly, who would they sell their widgets to if the US was in the economic toilet?

But what happens when growth slows? Which it will Surely at some stage the extreme inequality will hit home?

Do you guys not reckon they will ever float or devalue the yuan? They are backed into a corner, it will have to happen sometime and will be ugly when it does.

Don't get me wrong, they might take us all down with them, or at least the US if they get frustrated and dump dollars.

Close to a billion people are at some stage going to figure out trickle down economics is a pile of crap

Oh really? I think you will have a job convincing them of that. Remember thirty years ago they could barely afford to feed their own population. Now they are the 2nd largest economy in the world and absolutely thriving.

The children of the rural poor are increasingly heading to the towns when they can. In a 2010 poll nearly two thirds of Chinese judged their lives as better than five years previously - a much higher proportion than those in the US and Western Europe. The Chinese showed huge confidence for the future too - 74% judged that their lives would be infinitely better in five years.

During the us middle class boom years of the 1950's to 1990's the urban population was 80% of the country and virtually all of the growth. In China it is only just 50%. i think this makes it hard to compare the two, or at least lessens the impact the rising wealth of the middle class in china will have.

Factory workers yes, hamishbear, but i am talking about the rural poor. Very different there i think.

Mandarin is close to being the main language of the internet - if it isn't already.

I think there's a myth that those that work in factories in China etc are miserable and have a pitiful life - many are happy and finding better jobs with more money as time goes by. They go home to their family with leather goods they've made in the factory to give as presents, these don't mean a lot to them. They are ambitious. The rising middle class are hopeful, just as the rising middle class in America were hopeful. They want the gadgets, they want the car etc.

The sheer scale of china is crazy. I did a training session there a while ago (run in mandarin, a language i don't speak. Fun) and they dismissed facebook as 'too niche' as they only had about 60 million chinese users.

Yes, they wrote off the population of the uk as a niche.

They seem to have swapped communism for nationalism without anyone really noticing.

I also think they are a ticking bomb internally. Close to a billion people are at some stage going to figure out trickle down economics is a pile of crap and they have been played for chumps by a ruling elite. I don't think it will be pretty when that happens.

Interesting question. Perhaps some relevant points on this thread: Chinese thread

I've been reading widely about this lately. China sees itself as possibly the most important country in the world, a civilization that was once tremendously influential and powerful. It has been once and it will be so again - as they see it at least. If you know the mindset you can begin to work out what they desire.