A Microcosm In The Republican Debate

[LeSellers]

China ... even [has] a housing bubble that far exceeds ours. So I don't know how much longer that can be mantained.

One problem with (and for) China is the result of its one-child policy: there are not enough wives for the preferred boys most families have. This means that China will have to start a war to kill of many of their surplus men and, coincidentally, "solve" a "problem" with a neighboring country (probably Formosa/Taiwan, and perhaps others like India—which also has a shortage of women for much the same reason).

It's an old, but hardly feeble, way to deflect criticism form the state: whip up anti-somebody sentiment, and declare war on the gilty party. With China (and India, whcih has the same incentives to apply it), it solves two problems: the artificial economic "boom" is built upon a false base, and the Chinese people are beginning to recognize that, so the state, as financier-in-toto, has no one else to blame, as well as the destructive one-child mandate and its lack of wives outcome can be solved in one fell (meaning

fierce; cruel; dreadful; savage; destructive) swoop.

We USmericans, and most of the rest of the "free" world have much of which to be wary with regards to China.

Lehi

[thesometimesaint]

Lehi:

There is no animal as dangerous as an unemployed, unmarried man. China with its one child policy, and preference for males is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. It won't be war, but social anarchy.

[Jeff K.]

The last time the demographics approached this level a revolution and dissolution of the Chinese nation occurred. It is much more fractious than people may realize. Things may change, and in ten years we may look back and wonder at how silly present predictions are.