I thought it would be good to start a thread about China wide problems, what we believe will happen to China in the future, to share ideas around the problems facing China in the next 5-10 years time. As Yunnan is part of China, I think its pretty relevant here. I aren't sure I are breaking any rules having such a conversation, but I don't believe so.

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Personally, I am most worried about the Chinese property bubble. If it explodes, it will be massive for China. Unemployment will sky rocket as big construction companies and all associated services collapse. The government will be under severe pressure as the economy dramatically slows and people lose all the equity they believed they had locked up in their houses. Cars will be repossessed, credit cards will be withdrawn forcing a reduction in consumer spending. Wages will tighten and the government will probably put taxes up. At the same time basic goods will become more expensive. China's GDP growth will be slashed, crime will rise and social discontent will grow.

It will be just like America now and the past few years... but I believe it will be worse as the size of the bubble is so much larger.

Normally I am an optimist about such things, but it appears China has managed to combine the worst of capitalism with the worst of communism and created a beast the likes of which the world has never seen. And there are signs that the beast is teetering.

And the worst of it? China can no longer feed its own people and is now a food importer. If it was to close its doors there is a very real threat its people will starve (again).

What could be the trigger? America defaulting on its debt to China? (the result being a severe credit downgrade to America and hence all the credit China's construction etc being based on failing). Government intervention? (there is potential for the current capital gains tax to have the reverse effect and inflate property prices as people simply add the CGT amount onto house sale prices). Social discontent? America/WTO forcing China to actually float its currency properly?
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But there is hope. China is a centrally run, by the government, which controls the economy and country. If the government can gently deflate the property bubble slowly, they SHOULD be able to escape the worst of it. At the same time they will need to make massive changes though. This includes things like:

Utilising its labour force better - increasing productivity wages and labour force utilisation. There is a potential that this will happen through opening its government owned businesses to much more competition (banks/telco's/construction etc).
Reducing wastage in businesses.
Getting serious about IP theft. This is more about theft of industry secrets from the west, which does dramatically more harm than good for China (as companies pull out of China/become less interested in doing business). At the same time they need to reform their education system to make young people CREATIVE, not just good at reading/writing and rote learning.
Getting businesses to adopt/learn more western practices so they can actually compete and win overseas. Its fine to do things the Chinese way in China, but elsewhere it just won't fly.
Graft/corruption/nepotism - needs to be dealt with SEVERELY. It is the main cause of pain for China both internally and externally for doing business.
Be peaceful to its neighbours, particularly Japan and the SE Asian ones, lest they get the most dangerous militarys in the world knocking on their doors. This means actually negotiating with neighbours around things like the cows tongue and diaoyu islands (which personally I think they should both compromise on and each take the half of the island facing each others mainlands!).
Weaning their economy off constant construction to one of consumption/spending. And hoping they can control it better than the west has managed.
And probably the hardest - fixing the pollution problems. With 90% of its waterways polluted in an increasingly hot and drought ridden world, that's not an enviable position to be in. They also need to stop using their coal plants and start using that massive desert in the west to generate electricity to cap global warming for their own long term interests.
Make farming cool again and increase their food production, while still controlling inputs (a very difficult but not impossible task).

If China can juggle all of these balls successfully, China will become a massively powerful juggernaut. If not, China won't be a nice place to be in. I think its a big crunch time in China's history, right now and over the next few years. We will either be lucky to be in it or lucky to be out of it if we escape. The newly elected leaders have one hell of a lot of work to do to take China to the next level. Not impossible, but certainly not easy.

What does everyone else think?

Wow! I thought I was reading a book! Ha..ha. Seriously though, some good points you brought up. The problem is that those that have money don't really have any good place to put it. Many Chinese are of the mind that owning properties will reap you fortunes but what they fail to consider that at the rate that they are going up, it's not such a good investment. There's just too many apartments going up with half of them empty.

I really hope China does well because this is my new home with my wife being Chinese, I really have no other place to go. 加油！加油！

That's a really good point actually. If the banks started offering savings account interest rates at a rate above inflation... that may help to stem the tide of investment in housing... particularly if housing values drop at the same time.

That would require, I suspect, one of my points - opening up banking to international competition.

The Chinese are one of the best savers in the world, not sure how much more the government can expect people to put in the bank. Higher interest rates would slow the economy as loans become more expensive.

I think the hope for China is if the new president can implement full and efficient Social Welfare coverage for the population causing basically free healthcare and good old age care, combining that with free education then Chinese people will stop saving and start spending like crazy,,then you will see a powerful economy.

However without political reform they know it won't happen.

War with a neighbour might bring about some increases in the economy short term,, that's another way forward.

1. Japan will finally apologize (a real apology, not that fake crap they've been doing the last 60 years) for it's war crimes etc.

2. The USA will finally self destruct from financial corruption - a repeat of 1988 (S&L meltdown), 2008 (global financial meltdown), 2028 - wait for it. Fannie Mac & Ginnie Mae - but this time the meltdown will be irreversible plunging the US economy into a massive irreparable hole.

3. China will bail out the US economy yet again and take over financial management of the country (just kidding on this one), nationalizing all USA too big to fail banks and executing the leaders for global economic war crimes. AIG will be bailed out by China and become a state owned enterprise. Europe will look to China for global stability - as they're the only country remaining who can actually buy back the worthless greenbacks.

4. North Korea, to everyone's surprise, tries to invade Japan and is formally annexed to everyone's relief, except South Korea and the USA.

5. The US solar industry will collapse yet again - everyone will once again blame china to try to avert attention for fraudulently crappy management. US oil reserves will be depleted leading the USA to blame China (yet again) for America's self reliance on fossil fuels - China meanwhile has gone green and spread the technology to every continent but the America's.

6. Africa becomes a unified republic based on China's system of government. All African nations develop self-sustaining economies based on Chinese-built infrastructure.

7. California slides into the pacific ocean - the USA blames the event on China's 3 gorges damn.

8. The US Postal Service finally is allowed to go bankrupt - the US government blames China for not opening up it's postal services to the USPS. China buys the USPS and saves everyone's jobs.

9. The US Social Security pyramid scheme finally collapses - China bails it out and incorporates it into China's now re-designed social insurance system - saving the lives of retirees and providing affordable health care for all.

10. The US president is impeached because she sold off Fannie MAC, GINNIE MAE, the US Social Security, the US Postal Service, AIG, and nationalized all their major banks to China to support their invasion of Antarctica - claiming penguins are secretly hiding weapons of mass destruction - secretly supported by China and that walrus seals are victims of penguin genocidal policies.

11. The legendary administerium is discovered on the moon. The USA claims ownership of the moon - since they planted the first flag there.

12. China colonizes the moon to mine administerium while the US government is still bickering over whether the new space shuttle should be staffed by more republicans or democrats.

13. 30% of the US population goes on welfare - retirees flee to Canada to avoid taxes. Mexico builds a fence (using Chinese contractors) to block the flow of illegal americans, crossing the border illegally seeking menial high tech and high finance jobs.

14. The NSA and big pharma accidentally release the T-Cell Virus, originally intended for release in China, causing widespread zombie-ism in the Americas. America is re-organized and the NRA becomes the dominant political party. Republicans and democrats were essentially wiped out as they were bickering over whether zombies are US citizens with rights or zombies which must be ruthlessly exterminated and destroyed.

15. China begins importing US zombies as a source of virtually perpetual energy, creating zombie utility companies (zombies on treadmills). The USA enacts a law stating zombies are US citizens upon creation and institutes massive trade export taxes and tariffs on zombies claiming China is illegally involved in zombie US citizen trafficking - however the trade imbalance between the two countries has now stabilized, the US military has been nationalized by China and the USA becomes a Chinese vassal state.

16. Iran accidentally detonates a dirty neutron bomb - obliterating the nation in an instant.

17. An Australian is voted president of the UN.

18. Samsung completes human DNA maps and discovers japanese are genetically Korean descent, and not actually descended from the moon god amaterasu.

19. Japan synthesizes the moon god amaterasu and definitively shows their link to the moon god.

20. Amaterasu goes insane and destroys Japan.

And finally, @laotou if finally banned from gokm for excessive posts. GOKM, now a global search site that bought out google, yahoo, and bing, enforces the ban for this current life and the next 13 successive re-incarnations.

@laotou, blobbles started this thread to discuss china and its future.

Excelllllleeeentt laotou, may all your predictions come true! I forgive your mostly off topic satire for it was worth the chuckles.

blobbles touched on it in the original post, but I think water scarcity is the most fundamental problem facing China. Pollution of waterways is only one part of a huge problem. It just doesn't seem that the country has enough usable water. The water diversion projects currently underway to protect Beijing and Tianjin are frankly drops in a bucket as far as the entire country is concerned. I don't have a clue what the solution is. Perhaps desalinization on a massive scale, but that of course requires enormous amounts of energy.

Pollution mucks up the water table eco-system - especially particulate matter and chemical pollution in the atmosphere. To counteract that - we launch chemical cloud seeds (particulate chemical matter) to facilitate rain or snow (depending on the atmospheric conditions).

Pollution of lakes, waterways, cisterns, all seriously mucks up the delicately balanced eco-system - it is the plague of fossil-fuel-based civilization, unabated industrial pollution, and will take eons to clean up naturally. On top of that the deserts of the world expand (not contract) at an alarming rate - however we still manage to feed most of the people on the earth with the limited agro-resources. USA grocery stores dump tons of allegedly expired foods DAILY. Charity groups are banned from salvaging or using such foods as they're "expired" and potentially harmful.

So - as mentioned - water will be a critical issue for China - and the world. Let's hope the government can at least halt the destruction of the water eco-system and begin reversing the effects - such as introduction of renewable energies, migration to clean eco-neutral transportation (fuel cells, stored energy, etc).

Even we restore China's ecosystem (look how long it's taking to clean up dianchi) - we still have to deal with pollution from neighbors - slash & burn farming, dynamite fishing (not a pun), poaching, deforestation.

On top of all this - while the USA points accusatory fingers at China's current refusal to commit to carbon targets, the USA refused to join the Kyoto protocol...those fingers are spastically pointing all over the place.

As for off-topic, China population, consumption, and production all have massive impacts on everything in the world - from finance to construction to operations. Everything China does impacts the world. The days of borders, sovereign countries, colonialism etc are relics of the past. We will have to learn to live as good neighbors, peer pressure (the UN), and self discipline if we're to sustain life on this scarred planet.

I'm not particularly encouraged - but at least China recognizes that one can only poop in one's own bed so much before we have to lay down and wallow in it, so I'm glad the country is perhaps seriously putting ecology on the 5 year "guideline" (name changed to be kinder and friendlier I suppose).

The USA has to reign in its utterly irresponsible fiscal policies and start policing its financial systems in a responsible manner. The fact that the USA sourced two virtually identical real estate bubble implosions arising out of government sponsored loan programs is utterly irresponsible.