Is Michigan A Future Glimps of China?

Gordon Chang, an an article in Forbes, notes some of the changes that are happening to China's manufacturing economy.  According to him six cities, including Shenyang a city I once visited, are now allowing defunct and abandoned industrial sites to turn into farmland. Now this doesn't necessarily indicate a larger trend, though I do find it interesting that a city I had visited less than two years ago, and was growing at an exorbitant pace, is allowing land to return to nature.

What is even more interesting is that the rising costs of manufacturing on the east coast of China have forced manufacturers to either move inland or overseas. This is nothing new, and has been documented for some time now, China is getting more expensive and losing it's competitive advantage. This is interesting because China has always had issues with regionalism. The wealthier coasts will probably do everything they can to try and keep industry where it is while the interior will do everything it can to take industry away.

Is South Africa Becoming Increasingly Racially Radicalized?

My girlfriend forwarded this disturbing report today in an instance where South African police fired into a crowd of striking workers, killing 18.  Even more disturbing than an instance of police violence on its citizens is that the striking workers were armed with machetes, apparently this strike has already gone violent in some respects.

The fact that workers, in a country that has long had to deal with poverty for much of its citizens, are becoming more vocally radical isn't too unexpected, though not reassuring.  What really bothers me is that I detected the beginnings of what could become unrest that is more race based.

“N.U.M. is working with the white people and getting money. They forgot about the workers"

I don't expect the old wounds of apartheid South Africa to have healed in only twenty years. But the fact that there are protesters wielding machetes and that some of them specifically mention race, well, that might be a harbinger of things to come. Though I certainly hope that it isn't the case.