Auspundits

Can The China Boom Continue?

* By Polar Bear

The belief that the China growth story will continue into the indefinite future is so deeply ingrained at both the political and business levels that any dissent is either ignored or summarily dismissed. Upon this belief rests the hope that we will escape the worst of any US economic slowdown.

These Guys Are Shameless

* By Grant Harris

Emerson is now trying to kick the productivity can and link our prosperity somehow to the China boom.

This may well be a narrative that they start to run as a way of protecting themselves from mismanagement - ie, blame it all on China.

Skill and infrastructure shortages - the latter is a state government issue dominated by Labor government ineptitude and what are the ALP's changes to IR laws going to do to assist the first?

And then he pushes the notion of a seamless national market - just wait until the states get hold of that one and start kicking it around for their own leverage.

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* Grant Harris likes thinking about big picture issues and tries to connect dots where they haven't been connected before.

Moral Equivalence In Space?

America's "dangerous display of space warfare"! (quotes made up!):

Thomas P.M. Barnett makes the following point in the post linked above:

Chinese shoot down satellite and we see threat. We do same and it's just a "routine safety issue."

Rewind a couple of months.

Chinese espionage

First there is that concerted cyber-espionage ring exploiting vulnerabilities in Western defense, intelligence and governmental departments. Then there was their elaborate syphoning operation harvesting raw intelligence from an NSA listening post in Hawaii which lasted "several years" (!). And now a possible attempt by the Chinese to steal Aegis missile defense system data.

Healthy scepticism of Chinese strategic objectives are wise.

Chinese cyber warfare capabilities

There has been lots in the news recently about Chinese attacks on Western government ministries.

China needs to grow up on Taiwan ... and so do we

China needs to grow up on Taiwan ... and so do we. Or so says U.S. grand-strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett talking sense on the Chinese/U.S. strategic posturing over Taiwan.