The risk of growth in China

Working in Singapore for an international bank, it's easy to see the shifting of Asian economies from US domination towards China. The size of the Chinese internal market makes it hard to keep up with growing demand, as prosperity increases. The weakening dollar acts as an extra incentive to divert export from the US to China (and to a lesser extent India). The biggest issue with the Chinese economy is the lack of transparency and regulatory oversight. This could create bubbles that will create shockwaves of Enronian proportions when they collapse. Already the housing prices in cities like Shenzen and Shanghai are on the same level as Hong Kong and Singapore. Rising consumerism puts pressure on the lower-middle class to keep up and banks are not saying no. This could create whole new set of Asian sub prime- and credit crunches. Chinese do not have a tradition of living on borrowed money, like most Americans do and once used to easy credit, might lack the discipline to only buy on credit when absolutely neccesary. Rampant corruption and 'guanxi' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi) make it hard for foreign investors to invest in the country. Rising wages will also make investing less attractive in the long run. The best way for other Asian nations to become less dependend on Chinese export is to cooperate and develop their own economies, much the same way the EU are doing. The Asian Pacific Rim countries sshould look at non-Pacific regions as well. ASEAN is a good step towards this goal but there is still a lot of distrust and (again) corruption. The difference in size and development of countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand compared to their poorer brothers Vietnam, Cambodia e.a. make integration a difficult task not to mention that in Birma there's no economic freedom at all.