A Scary Place

There are many scary things out there, including:

     another bunch of identikit Chinese leaders has been wheeled out;
     the Eurozone is back in recession;
     the Middle East looks to increasingly be like a tinder box.

It was the Chinese that really caught my eye. China could well be at a turning point in its economy and one just has to wonder whether the new band of grey suited, black haired, red tied Party boys have what it takes to manage the change or whether they are, as I intimated above, died in the same old wool.

Among the challenges facing the country are

     how to cope with its staggering population growth (480M in 30 years);
     how to manage the threat that rising wages will erode its competitiveness (tho' there are signs that China may manage to pull off the "keep productivity rises above wage rises" trick);
     what to do about its demographics (the proportion of over 60s rose from 10.4% to 13.3% in the decade to 2010 while under 14s declined from 22.9% to 16.6%).

Would you want to cope with that over the next 10 years? Wish the Party boys some luck - the world needs a China that doesn't implode.