The point is that China may well have to occupy Aus, we need to see how it is possible for this to happen and how Aus, as a competitive nation, are able to prevent it.

You see a the end of the day being a sovereign nation may not count for Aus, as it in fact does not amount to much in the 3rd world that no one wants, unless it has something other than people eg oil. It's convoluted, it's typically human.

GM? I agree its simply another monopoly anyway. We need to give in to the natural order of things, it will happen.....not my project per say.

But a technology that makes the cost of labour irrelevant makes populous humans irrelevant. This is the advantage that Aus could have ie energy.materials ratio per capita, the currency of sustainability........

What is the energy.materials/capita ratio of other nations? I suggest that large populations will be domed GM (a capitalist distraction) will not save them. Think about how the Chinese & co are going to afford to supply energy and materials at the same ratio as Aus that pay dole twice that of a Chinese average worker.

Unless our irrigation abomination in the north west becomes viable Australia is probably now cropping just a bit over what our oils & water can sustainably stand (we are getting better). Productivity gains sought should now be incremental recognising the continuous record of reckless scientific error of the past and cross species GM should be left on the shelf for a century. A whole new framework for intellectually property should be negotiated in that time that marks down the value ad basis and length of the revenue recovery tail when the product was based on bio theft from the commons to underwrite the "enterprise". Conagra is just trying to master the bio version of colonialism.

As for the Africans, give them a break, and stop subsidising US and EU farmers and they will start feeding themselves and increasing their productivity so they can make money. That way they won't be always forced back to subsistence farming by rational decisions made by capital owners / lenders that they can't compete with US/EU artificially lowered world prices or local "US/EU aid donations". And don't get me started on the abominable western treatment of the Zimbabwean food bowl competition.

Hmm what about 20 Million Aus hogging a continent and 'marking time' with their ineffective industrial capacity with ineffective defence capability. China would be a big help to Aus and grow lots of food with lots of Chinese, maybe we can bring some African over too and teach them how to grow food.

Seriously China will have annihilated its ecological sustainability with all its polluting industry and Africa will just annihilates its self with its engrossing human misery. Move over Aus, our world is just about to end.

How about gay? And no, I'm not trying to be funny. Certainly in many parts of SE Asia there are a heck of a lot more gay blokes (and in Thailand katoey) than there seem to be in the west.

At the very least, market movers should realise that countless scores of factories have been destroyed and that a lot of accumulated wealth is now gone. Insurers may go bust.

The cost of reconstruction will place a massive burden on the Chinese Government. The US dollar stockpile will undoubtedly be used for this purpose placing further downward pressure on the US currency.

Back to the article, China is not a single economic bubble. There are many bubbles in China that deserve to pop but there are just as many many Chinese bubbles with iron cores.

As an aside, the Goverment of China will use the reconstruction effort to prop up its own case in this politically divided region.