Word: changes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Want to know precisely when and where the People's Republic of China will begin to collapse? Gordon G. Chang's boldly titled The Coming Collapse of China (Random House; 320 pages) presumes to tell you. A counterrevolution, probably violent, will come five years after China's entry into the World Trade Organization. If, as expected, China joins the WTO later this year, the apocalypse will therefore be upon us in 2006. And it will begin in the most prosaic setting: the lobbies of Chinese banks?as millions try to withdraw their savings and deposit them in Western banks...
...Chang proposes other possible triggers of collapse, including a failed P.R.C. attempt to invade Taiwan. But he bases his central prediction on a WTO provision: two years after China's accession, foreign banks will be able to conduct business in the local currency with domestic corporate customers. Three years later, hundreds of millions of Chinese with household deposits already totaling close to $800 billion will also be able to choose between a Chinese and a foreign bank. But the Chinese banks that now hold this money have been lending it, on Beijing's instructions, to largely moribund state-owned enterprises...
...will not remain silent forever. Inevitably, the Internet will carry rumors that China's big four banks?the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China?are in trouble. "That's when the revolution will begin," Chang writes. He asks a rhetorical question which, as he sees it, Chinese will have to confront from 2006 on: "Now that you have a choice (will you) keep your money with an insolvent institution or one that can pay you back?" The answer?like most of this book's conclusions?is simple...
...after learning they were wanted by police on the mainland, they turned themselves over to local authorities. An extradition battle is now brewing: China wants the Tus back, and the Taiwanese police want to try them on the island. The Taiwanese in Nanhai aren't holding their breath. Says Chang Chin-shun, the secretary-general of the area's Taiwanese businessmen's association: "Taiwan wants the evidence, but in this case there's nothing we can do to help...
...bian summoned 34 of Taiwan's brightest minds to the presidential palace, put them in a conference room, and told them not to come out until they had a plan for fixing the shuddering economy. The best and brightest dutifully took their places around the mahogany table and Premier Chang Chun-hsiung opened the floor to ideas. One came from banker-tycoon Jeffrey Koo, who said the meeting was a big waste of time because there were too many politicians present. Morris Chang, celebrity chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., said he didn't think 34 people could agree...