China - a systemic update

William Pesek had a systemically illuminating article entitled 'Today's Chinese proverb: he who craves wealth joins the party'  in yesterday's business section of The Saturday Age. His, possibly tongue in cheek, conclusion is that 'if the rich keep getting richer at the expense of the poor, China may actually need to go communist'.  It is telling that the Gini coefficient for rural China was 0.3949 late last year, close to the 0.4 threshold that UN analysts suggest is the warning level for social unrest.  He also claims that China 'hasn't devised a strategy to cut pollution' nor made its leaders more accountable. This is a useful update on reflections of my own posted in earlier blogs.