Scene from the Tibetan riots in 2008
Is China destined to implode once again? George Friedman, in his book The Next 100 Years, dismisses China's rise. The chapter is entitled "Paper Tiger". He suggests that the historical issues which have plagued China in previous times will resurface yet again, once the economic growth begins to retract. The recent strong performance of China's economy in the Global Financial Crisis suggests China will continue to rise economically. But could Friedman possibly be correct?Recently China's blogging community has been enraged by widely circulated figures which indicate that 0.4 per cent of the population possess 70 per cent of the PRC's wealth, while 91 per cent of those with assets of 100 million RMB or more are children of senior Communist Party cadres.
