Who cares? Our only interest in China should be its dangerously growing ownership of Australian agricultural land, which should never have been allowed. The fact that the Chinese Communist Party is tolerating a “lack of an energetic working population”, and “ families (leaving) the countryside” indicates their acquisition of land in Australia is part of their global expansion and control efforts in Western countries like Australia and New Zealand, which they regard as a soft touch.

Another thing we need to keep a careful watch on is the encroachments on our media by Chinese immigrants whose first and only loyalty is to the motherland, not Australia.

The CCP relentlessly seeks to undermine any and all opposition to it both at home and abroad. In fact, there is no 'abroad' for people identified as PRC citizens by the CCP. Some Chinese have come to Australia to escape totalitarianism; but others here are up to no good.

Please read Clive Hamilton's 'Silent Invasion' to appreciate the threat that the PRC poses for Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asian countries.

China's new emperor, Xi Jinping has set the 'Chinese Dream' as his key policy. Judging from his actions rather than his rhetoric, this involves little more than threatening other nations. He punished South Korea for installing the THAAD missile defence system. He grabbed Sri Lanka's Hambantota port in a forced debt-for-equity swap. He bullied the Philippines and Vietnam, and he constantly harasses Japan along its air and maritime boundaries. Add to that the regular threats to invade Taiwan and wipe out its democracy in favour of Communist party control.

While one can agree with most of what ttbn is saying! One needs to look more closely at the underlying factors causing some of the identified problems.

China has a huge aging population and lack of food security!

China has lived through successive devastating generational famines! And fear of famine is now part of the Chinese psyche.

Speaking as a former contract cultivator, China still confronts the problem of tenant farmers and little if any land security for farming families. And need to hold the promise of freehold owned land as their promise/reward to most productive incentivised families and co-ops.

It also needs to stop treating its rural heartland as a dump for the toxic waste of its industries and needs to irrigate and decontaminate its new desert regions. And instead utilise high heat furnaces to treat the waste/recover the constituent materials that can be recovered and reused!

And this is where western deionisation dialysis desalination could play a very productive part as would intense under glass agriculture.

However a long as they continue to pollute the landscape and just to build to a price to compete with other more environmentally conscious nations. The identified problems with food production can only be exacerbated!
Alan B.

Sounds like a great leap forward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Consequences

Look no further than the statistic that most farms in China are still no bigger than 10 hectares. What? That's hobby farm size in Australia. No wonder they're still having problems - no wonder there's still no investment in agricultural productivity. Another problem, as pointed out by other posters, is that the Chinese government still has to rediscover the concept of private property - that is, if they confiscate or damage private land in some way they should pay compensation at a fair market rate - if and when they permit any farmers to own the land. As I understand it, the Chinese government has yet to grasp this basic point. Without the ownership thing there won't be the investment thing..

"According to World Bank data on China, "the share of the population living in poverty fell from 88.3% in 1981 to 66.6% in 1990 and 1.9% in 2013."

That shows what happens when you ditch socialism.

SM. China has not ditched socialism, a very different animal from communism, but rather, embraced it and a free market economy and a new Emperor. Other socialist countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland and our near neighbour Singapore. Prove, that like tiny resource poor Singapore. Socialism has a place and been a virtual saviour for the tiger economies, rather than the problem many blinkered conservatives see? If one doesn't want to see it gain further footholds and that's in play, then the only solution in prospect for private enterprise, free market economies, is co-operative capitalism. What China, unlike every other socialist economy, failed to also embrace, is democracy and the concept of private property! Alan B.

AB,

Socialism:
noun
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

China's economic success has hinged upon rejecting socialism as defined above by giving land to farmers, allowing entrepreneurs to build own and profit from businesses etc.

Yes SM. Understand the concept and not for profit service models, like member's own health insurance and credit unions etc. Tiny Singapore owns an airline a telco and the oil refineries producing the most significant part of our imported fuel requirements etc. Yet like all sanely led socialist democracies allow private enterprise and freehold tenure. In a communist country all is owned by the state and operated by this or that appointed collective, which often have quotas that must be met! And needs a certain amount of slavery to survive as economic models. Even so, we have communes and collectives in the west along with the most successful economic model of all time the co-op. Free and fair elections and or their lack, all that separates the socialist democracies and China, which we don't have a problem with! Given they are the biggest source of our export incomes. If we were fair dinkum in our condemnation. why do we trade with them and in so doing, help them to grow both their economy and military might! Alan B.

AB,

40yrs ago China was fully socialist with all means of production owned and controlled by the state. Today it is partially socialist, and its economic success is due to its large scale abandonment of socialism.

Capitalism does not exclude a state providing public goods that are essential but difficult to profit from such as policing, defense, public schooling, basic health care, national parks, etc

When states start expanding into providing non-public goods is when things go badly.

PS Co-ops are successfully under certain circumstances but are far from the most successful production model.