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Weekly » The titillating and terrifying collapse of the dollar. Again.
This post was originally published at China Financial Markets.
By Michael Pettis
Foreign perceptions about the Chinese economy are far more volatile than the economy itself, and are spread across a fantastic array of forecasts. On one extreme there are still many who hold the view that overwhelmingly dominated the consensus just four of five years ago, with a book by Martin Jacques,When China Rules the World, titillating or terrifying many with a subtitle that promised the end of the Western world and the birth of a new global order. Although few within this camp still believe in their earlier forecasts of 8-9 percent annual growth for another one or two decades, many among them still think China will manage to double its GDP in ten to twelve years.
On the other extreme are those who expect the economy to collapse well before the end of the decade. Although he himself does not expect an economic collapse but rather a political one, among the deeply pessimistic is George Washington University’s David Shambaugh, who published an article in the Wall Street Journal last year about “The Coming Chinese Crackup”.