any China expert and specialists in here? would like to hear their view. there is no doubt that in sheer size, the chinese economy is probably going to be at least as big as the US economy in the next 10-15 years. however, this does not make it into a economic superpower. to being with, on last count, china has almost one billion more people than the US. so any kind of economic superpower celebrity status is a long way off china and the chinese people. i think the further away it is, the more risk there is that things might go wrong for the chinese. i mean comeon, there is no way they can sustain 9% growth rates for the next 6-7 years on a row. that just won't happen. also, there is a tendency to apply a monolithic approach when it comes to china. well the communist party does not help, but china really is not as heterogeneous as sometimes it is made out to be in the US media. there is vast inequality within the chinese economy and this is something that has been giving the chinese economists quite a bit of headache. finally, the question is not only will china become a superpower but also will it want to become one? at least in the sense we define superpower right now. sure it is a little touchy when it comes to taiwan and japan. but these are old issues and very hard to let go because of all the sentimentality involved. on all other fronts, the 'leadership model' adopted by the chinese seems drastically different from that of the US. just look at the 'observer' status it maintains in asean for example. or the response to the coup - 'internal affairs' - very typically chinese, and not surprising at all. they almost seem to be at pains in a lot of different occassions to establish their modesty at every possible juncture. of course just the sheer scale of things it needs to achieve, economically or otherwise, is mind-boggling to anyone. and the chinese seem to be acutely aware of that. in other words, their modus operandi is strikingly different from the all-meddling, all-pressure, all-preachy model of the americans. personally, i am starting to think that race has something to do with this for that is for another day. btw, is dollar devaluation now all but inevitable? funny how things come back to haunt people. i remember the summer of 2003, washington was just all agog with the diagnosis that a weak yuan is the ruin of US economy. to me it just seemed like a vain attempt to recapture the glory days, something that is not going to happen unless they want the old days with all the bells and whistles - i mean come on now, US consumption has increased because of cheap china. but now that everyone knows the chinese hold huge dollar reserves, any indication from beijing of revaluation will induce the decline of dollar vis-a-vis every other major currency. will this prompt a dollar meltdown? perhaps not, but will it erode the US economy, for sure yeah. how much? well, we'll just have to wait and see, i guess. unless we have some china expert in here to tell us better.