Daily Archives: May 4, 2010

China’s Economy May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months

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I guess the old adage still applies: “If the US economy sneezes the world catches cold” except, right now, we have a cold.

China, who relies heavily on exports to the United States, is having a tough time pulling itself out of a recession:

“The market is telling you that something is not quite right,” Faber, the publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong today. “The Chinese economy is going to slow down regardless. It is more likely that we will even have a crash sometime in the next nine to 12 months.”

An index tracking Chinese stocks traded in Hong Kong dropped 1.8 percent today, the most in two weeks, after the central bank raised reserve requirements for the third time this year. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 12 percent this year, Asia’s worst performer, as policy makers seek to rein in a lending boom that’s spurred record gains in property prices. China’s markets are shut for a holiday today.

Copper touched a seven-week low and BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, fell the most since February on concern spending in the world’s third-largest economy will slow and after Australia boosted taxes on commodities producers. Rio Tinto Ltd., the third-largest, slid as much as 6 percent.

As I pointed out on the excellent web site The Resistance (you should check it out) the Chinese government is trying to prop up its economy through a ‘New Deal’ style government works project and that effort is only prolonging China’s slide in to recession.

via China May ‘Crash’ in Next 9 to 12 Months, Faber Says (Update3) – Bloomberg.com.

The T-50 Russian Stealth Fighter

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Via The DEW Line (from a Sukhoi press release):

A promising fifth-generation aviation complex (PAK FA) rose today in the sky from the airfield FRI them Gromov in Zhukovsky near Moscow, continuing, thus, a program of flight tests.

Fly the aircraft Honored Test Pilot of the Russian Federation Sergey Bogdan. The first flight of the PAK FA was held on 29 January this year at the airport included holding “Sukhoi” Komsomolsk-on-Amur aviation production association Yuri Gagarin (KnAAPO). Upon successful completion of the first phase of tests, which consisted of six flights, the fighter was delivered to Zhukovsky.

Compared with previous generations of fighters, PAK FA has several unique features, combining the functions of attack aircraft and fighter. The aircraft is equipped with a fifth-generation an entirely new avionics, which integrates the function of “e-pilot”, and promising radar with a phased antenna array. This greatly reduces the load on the pilot and can concentrate on the implementation of tactical tasks. On-board equipment of the new aircraft allows the exchange of data in real time as a land-management systems, and within the aviation group.

Defense analysts think that the T-50 is not so much a challenge to the US Air Force’s F-22 as it is a means to maintain air superiority over the Chinese Air Force:

Even though it is nearly automatic to think of the PAK FA/T-50 in terms of a direct confrontation vs. the F-22, and this may indeed have been the original goal when the programme was first launched in the late 1980s, in the current global strategic scenario it is perhaps more likely that the Russians are rather interested in maintaining an air superiority edge over China’s current J-11s/SU-27s/-30s and future J-12. Also, the expected future worldwide usage of the F-35 JSF attack aircraft with its low observability qualities requires an interceptor capable to deal with this peculiar threat.

A cool video about Future Dog Fights and the F-22: