The Chinese economy is running on fumes? I live in that region and it seems like mainland China is a sponge for economic activity. People in the surrounding countries and territories think China is the economic hub of Asia, and there is a lot of documented business/economic activity to back that up.
That was not the general forecast until the past few days, but even then the US could soon implement Bannon-esque policies regarding China:
US launches China trade secret probe
http://www.dw.com/en/us-launches-china-trade-secret-probe/a-40156385
The top US trade negotiator has described China's industrial policies as a "very serious problem." US President Donald Trump has accused China of cheating the US economy out of "hundreds of billions of dollars."
The United States is China's second-largest trading partner following the European Union. In 2016, the US had a trade deficit with China of nearly $310 billion (268.7 billion euros).
Next Stop for the Steve Bannon Insurgency: China
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/politics/steve-bannon-china-trump.html
Stephen K. Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Trump, views China as the greatest long-term threat to the United States. “A hundred years from now, this is what they’ll remember — what we did to confront China on its rise to world domination,” he said.
Mr. Bannon is taking his insurgency abroad.
Next week, he plans to travel to Hong Kong to deliver a keynote address at an investor conference, where he will articulate his call for a much tougher American policy toward China. CLSA, the Hong Kong brokerage firm that invited Mr. Bannon, is owned by a politically connected Chinese investment bank, Citic Securities.
The meeting and speech kicks off an effort by Mr. Bannon, who served as President Trump’s chief strategist, to influence his former boss on China policy as much as he does on immigration, trade or tax policy. Given the lack of strong voices on China in the administration and the inconsistency in its approach, Mr. Bannon believes he can make a difference, though his record when he was inside the White House was mixed.
“China right now is Germany in 1930,” Mr. Bannon said. “It’s on the cusp. It could go one way or the other. The younger generation is so patriotic, almost ultranationalistic.”
Mr. Bannon’s combative views on China are no secret to those who listened to his Breitbart radio show before the election. In March 2016 he declared,
“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.” Last month, he told Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the left-leaning journal The American Prospect, “We’re at economic war with China” — one of a number of impolitic observations that hastened his departure from the White House.
“China’s model for the past 25 years, it’s based on investment and exports,” he said. “Who financed that? The American working class and middle class. You can’t understand Brexit or the 2016 events unless you understand that
China exported their deflation, they exported their excess capacity.”
“It’s not sustainable,” Mr. Bannon declared. “The reordering of the economic relationship is the central issue that has to be addressed, and only the U.S. can address it.”
