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...China's overall trade flows could be settled in renminbi by 2012 (though few other economists believe this will happen anywhere near that fast). This willingness to make its positions known publicly and push other governments to see things China's way "is very different from 10 years ago, when Beijing was much quieter and more low-profile," says Jun Ma, an economist at Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong. (See China covers...
...aware of the risks they are running. "They came into this [crisis period] with eyes wide open," says Barber, recognizing that loans being granted in a relatively weak economic climate could start to go bad in droves. The country's once shaky financial sector was cleaned up several years ago - in 2007, nonperforming loans amounted to just 3% of total bank assets - and vehicles set up to deal with China's last banking crisis still exist. In other words, Beijing thinks its financial system is strong enough to handle the risks of its very loose monetary policy...
...years ago, I read a terrific collection of essays - It Must be Beautiful - on the great scientific equations of modern times. I loved it, but as I meandered through the book, I was struck by an unexpected poignancy. The first essays, by and large, described breakthroughs that had taken place in the laboratories of Europe. The second half was quite different. Some time in the 1920s, the balance of scientific discovery shifted inexorably to the U.S. A small book of essays held within it proof of a profound historical change...
...This is particularly apposite in the case of China, a country with not only many possible futures, but (as it were) many pasts. There is a crude but commonly held thumbnail sketch of modern Chinese history that goes something like this: Two centuries ago, European powers tried to open a hermetic society to trade; they failed until the Opium Wars forced the issue; China then entered an era of foreign domination and internal chaos, which ended with the imposition of political stability by the Communist Party in 1949; in 1978, after another round of internal unrest, China chose to modernize...
...British élites in the decades before World War I - which did nothing to prevent the two nations going at each other like frenzied dogs. The point is simple: China may amaze us today, but nothing about its future is certain. Its rise, like Germany's 100 years ago, could lead to murderous rivalries. Or it could help usher in a period in which more of humankind has more material benefits, enjoyed in peace, than has ever been known before. We can only watch, and wonder...