, Columnist
What Is China's Biggest Weakness?
The very thing from which China's Communist Party has derived its strength and legitimacy in the 25 years since Tiananmen -- a booming economy -- is fast becoming its biggest weakness.
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It took China to prove Friedrich Nietzsche wrong. What didn't kill the Communist Party hasn't made it stronger. It's only making the inevitable crash bigger, more spectacular and needlessly dangerous.
China's debt reckoning is coming. Maybe not this quarter or this year, but Chinese President Xi Jinping's unbridled effort to keep growth from falling below the official 7.5 percent target is cementing China's fate. China is investing just as much as it did in 2008 and 2009, when authorities were desperately trying to avert a slowdown. Just as debt troubles in Japan, Europe and the U.S. ended badly, so will China's.