Note:
(a) Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower; The next generation of American preeminence and the coming global disorder. Twelve, 2014.
(b) Unfortunately, the VOA report is too brief about Zeihan's commentary.
(c) I googled and could not find latest reports on Zeihan's perceptions, or his own writings, about China. The following, though old, is representative of him.
"The driving force behind both the 1990 Japanese Crisis and the 1997 East Asian Crisis was that the countries involved did not maintain free capital markets. Those states managed capital to keep costs artificially low, giving them tremendous advantages over countries where capital was rationally priced. Of course, one cannot maintain irrational capital prices in perpetuity (as the United States is learning after its financial crisis); doing so eventually catches up. And this is what is happening in China now.
"It's also amazing how unprofitable such a country can be. The Chinese system, like the Japanese system before it, works on bulk, churn, maximum employment and market share. The U.S. system of attempting to maximize return on investment through efficiency and profit stands in contrast. The American result is sufficient economic stability to be able to suffer through recessions and emerge stronger. The Chinese result is social stability that wobbles precipitously when exposed to economic hardship. * * * There is, of course, the issue of inefficient capital use
"There is also the issue of consumption. Chinese statistics have always been dodgy, but according to Beijing's own figures, China has a tiny consumer base. This base is not much larger than that of France, a country with roughly one twentieth China's population and just over half its gross domestic product (GDP). China's economic system is obviously geared toward exports, not expanding consumer credit.
"STRATFOR sees a race on, but it isn't a race between the Chinese and the Americans or even China and the world. It's a race to see what will smash China first, its own internal imbalances or the US decision to take a more mercantilist approach to international trade.
* The last clause--America turning more mercantilist--was explained earlier in the essay: "the National Export Initiative (NEI) the White House[president Obama] is promulgating is much more mercantilist. It espouses doubling US exports in five years, specifically by targeting additional sales to large developing states, with China at the top of the list."
* There is no need to read the rest.