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RE: "I live a third of my life over there, run a factory there, do business there. . . ."

I've never been to China so I'm asking, Does this Economist article (below) have the facts? Unrest should definitely have an impact on business and the future; to wit, The Great Fall of China.

In some ways it seems to me that today's China resembles pre-revolution Nationalist China. I've seen other articles describing the internal Party conflict between the Dengists and the Maoists. Another revolution? I wonder.

Unrest is the "manifestation of widespread discontent in the Chinese countryside, which is being fuelled by poverty, inequality, corruption, rising healthcare costs and illegal land requisition. According to one official source, there were around 23,000 'mass incidents' in 2006, down from 26,000 in 2005. This implies that some progress is being made, although the reliability of these figures and the definition of what constitutes such an incident remains open to doubt (other official sources put the number of mass incidents in 2005 at 87,000)."

Poverty, inequality, corruption, rising healthcare costs and illegal land requisition; add in a "floating population" estimated to be 100 million-plus; discharged military men as China upgrades its military -- lots of problems. The Party is desperate to create 25 million jobs each year and IMO to achieve that goal anything goes.

Lots of other reports about intellectual property theft, counterfeit goods, knock-offs -- whatever it takes for private enterprise to meet Party goals.

I don’t think it’s as bad as the Economist makes it out to be... A lot of times a “riot” in China consists of 50 people screaming at some government local, and then going away. Rarely does it flare to anything worse than that (not because they’ll get shot, but that’s just the way the Chinese culture is).

China has a lot of problems to be sure, and they know their only way out is economically. Meaning they have to hook on to the EU or the US, and they’ve chosen the US. It also means they have to start letting a middle class develop (which is tiny, but growing), and they have to pay attention to what that middle class wants. Thus you get improvements in basic utilities, you get better roads, you get more economic - and political - freedom for the wealthier, richer provinces.

Corruption is actually decreasing, as are quality/manufacturing issues. It’s just that they’re much more visible because of more freedom of the press and foreign correspondents. Outside of China, we’re more aware of problems inside, but the number of problems is actually dropping pretty dramatically.

China’s going to follow the US economically for the next few generations, at least, and provide the “fingers and hands” for the US. We dominate - and will continue to do so - in research, high tech design, services. China will become more and more the manufacturing and low-tech design center, and they’re happy to do so.