07 Aug 2009, 5:39 pm
Resolved - there are a lot of people in China. Precisely how many is not relevant to the discussion
Resolved - the numbers change every time someone pops out in Maternity...
Question - are Chinese troops, man for man (or woman for woman) equivalent to US troops?
China owns hundreds of millions in debt. If they collected all at once, the bond market would collapse, and the actual value of their hundreds of millions would be reduced to toilet paper. You'd wind up wiping yourself out in the process.
They are diversifying, and slowly dropping out of Government securities, but it would be stupid to pull a stunt like that. Eventually, their exposure to risk would be low enough to pull out all at once, but that's a long way down the road.
China and the US are likely on a collision course, but it's a slow, gradual path as they ask, then demand for more say in the running of the world.
