China's Achilles Heel?

[Trapper John]

I have long held the view that US agriculture was its greatest asset. From the WSJ:

Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China's arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the "red line" of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country's 1.35 billion people.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829104578624010648228142.html?m od=e2tw

[Hacksaw]

Finally some good news on China

[glebo]

Finally some good news on China

Until the hungry starving hoards roll over Alaska and ito the bread basket...

[spherojon]

Other "good" news is that China has been hit with a disease outbreak in shrimp production. Now, that may seem trivial, but considering that China exports a large amount of shrimp to the US, this could be a "good" thing.
http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/20877/shrimp-prices-rise-globally



Dont even get me started on US imports of China Tilapia. As it stands, the US imports about 4 BILLION dollars worth of Tilapia from China. My point is that China uses a lot of resources to farm fish instead of crops. Now, if they were to implement aquaponics...well IMHO that would be a game changer for food-space ratio in China.

[BOfH]

MOO: Being an export driven economy, they have plenty of Achilles heels. Some food for thought: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/pc16-identifying-chinas-successors