By many measures, China looks and smells like it's already in the early stages of a major financial crisis and deep recession.[a] Publicly, the ruling party adamantly insists otherwise -- but that's always to be expected from politicians. We ought to consider only the data, not what they say. The data looks and smells really bad.

My biggest hope is that the economic pain will induce soul-searching and push China away from authoritarianism, leading to the country's gradual transition into a modern democracy -- to the detriment of party apparatchiks and their psychophants, whose power and importance depends on maintaining the status quo.

My biggest fear is that party apparatchiks start pushing for policies that can lead only to armed conflict in the hopes of holding on to their power and status -- e.g., they might push for annexing Taiwan by force in the short run, ensuring a confrontation with the West. Few things impede political change as well as armed conflict.

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[a] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101496 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101229 for background.