– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own –

Everyone agrees that China’s economy must be rebalanced, but few have bothered to delve into the costs. Japan’s experience has shown that even well-meant changes could sow the seeds for a bubble.

China cannot stay with its current economic model forever. But as the economy has become extremely unbalanced, to some extent even more so than Japan’s in the 1980s, rocking the boat too much risks tipping it over. Instead of rushing into changes, it would be better to make reforms gradually.

Most observers believe an extremely loose monetary policy was the root cause of Japan’s bubble. But Tomo Kinoshita, an economist at Nomura, reckons that efforts to liberalise the economy, such as sharply revaluing the yen, developing a deeper bond market and deregulating interest rates were among the fundamental reasons behind the bubble.

The challenges facing China’s economy are similar to those seen in Japan in the 1980s. Foreigners are calling for a currency revaluation because the undervalued yuan gives China’s exports an extra boost. Capital markets need to play a bigger role because investment has been directed mostly by state-owned banks.

True, property price increases appear to be milder than in the Japan of the 1980s. Household loans only account for 30 percent of disposable incomes in China, versus about 90 percent in Japan in 1989, according to Nomura. But there are warning signs. New mortgages recently hit a record. And ratings agency Fitch has cited China’s property market as a cause for concern.

The Chinese stock market also looks less overvalued than Japan’s did. The ratio of Chinese stock prices to earnings is only a third of the peak levels reached in Japan. Stock market capitalization as a percentage of GDP is 62 percent, much lower than Japan’s 150 percent at end of 1989. But China is catching up fast, and the ChiNext market, China’s long-awaited Nasdaq-style market, debuted last week with a speculative surge.

Moreover, China has been more aggressive in terms of monetary easing as it tries to prop up the economy while waiting for exports to return. The broad money supply in China has been rising at almost 30 percent this year, twice as much as in Japan back in the 1980s. So if there is a bubble, it could grow bigger than the one in Japan.

Even much-needed efforts to liberalise and rebalance the economy may lead to asset price inflation. Similar to China, Japan’s banks were too big and small companies had trouble getting financing. So developing a corporate bond market and encouraging banks to lend more to small firms was seen as a healthy change.

But policymakers underestimated the negative impact on banks. After Japan developed a liquid corporate bond market, large corporations issued cheap equity-linked bonds to repay bank loans. Because Japanese financial institutions lacked other revenue sources, they targeted smaller corporations and consumers. Total bank loans made to small- and medium-sized companies and individuals rose to 71 percent of total loans in the late 1990s from 47 percent in the late 1980s.

Due to a lack of information on their new clients, the banks’ bad loans started to rise. Their lending standards deteriorated as they scrambled to make up for lost business. This could very well happen in China as the country encourages consumers to take on more debt to stimulate domestic demand.

Moreover, Kinoshita argues that in Japan interest rate deregulation “put a cat amongst the banking pigeons” because banks were forced to lend out more when their margins became compressed due to more competition. Pressure from the United States played a role, and the Japanese authorities were eager to internationalize the yen anyway. Letting banks set deposit and lending rates was one of the requirements for the yen’s internationalization.

The policy lesson for China is that when Beijing takes business away from banks, it needs to balance things out by allowing them to take on new business, such as securities underwriting and broking.

But that leads to the question of how to compensate securities firms for their lost business and prevent them from engaging in reckless behavior. This just underscores the complexity of China’s problems.

Most of the world believes that China risks moving too slowly, not too fast. President Barack Obama might give Chinese leaders another ear bashing during his upcoming trip to China. But without the right systems in place, big bang reforms could be disastrous. It is important that China, as well as the rest of the world, learns from Japan’s mistakes.

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own —

China has finally given a green light for Disneyland to build a theme park in Shanghai. Negotiations that started when Bill Clinton was in the White House have concluded just before President Barack Obama is due to visit. The approval looks like a coup for Walt Disney Co, but it will take all of Mickey’s magic to prevent the park from becoming another government-financed loss maker.

Disney’s last theme park in the region was anything but a hit. Hong Kong Disneyland was created in 2005 in an effort to boost employment in the epidemic-stricken region, but attendance numbers have fallen short of target. This hits the Hong Kong government harder than Disney, because the former not only took an initial 57 percent equity stake in the venture, but also spent $1.75 billion building related infrastructure like a metro line and ferry piers.

Shanghai Disneyland is likely to be financed in the same way. Estimates for the park’s price tag are around $4 billion. The government and a group of Chinese companies will contribute about 60 percent of equity, with Disney paying for the rest. The Shanghai government is also likely to pay for the roads leading to the park.

The Hong Kong park has been a disappointment for a number of reasons, some of which might equally be relevant in Shanghai. It is the smallest Disneyland in the world, so it is crowded and not worth visiting for a second day. Culturally, locals identify more with the Ocean Park, which features pandas and sharks and is cheaper. Hong Kong Disneyland’s public image has also taken a hit from a bout of food poisoning and accusations that it has exaggerated visitor numbers.

The Shanghai park will be 3-4 times bigger than the one in Hong Kong, making space for more visitors. But this will also increase the cost of relocating current residents. Some locals are busy adding a second floor to their homes so they can demand more compensation when they move out.

Shanghai has twice Hong Kong’s population, but average income is only about a quarter that of its wealthier neighbour, so it’s far from clear how many visitors will be able to afford a ticket that will cost the equivalent of two days of earnings for a college graduate. Then there is the possibility that the Shanghai park will divert visitors from Hong Kong.

There is also a risk of a culture backlash. Chinese children are less familiar with Disney characters than their counterparts in, say, Japan, home to Disney’s most successful overseas theme park. That said, the Chinese have so far appeared to be receptive to the American cultural icon: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse appears on national TVs and Disney has opened a chain of language schools in Shanghai.

China’s decision to relent after ten years says a lot about its changed priorities. Before, the government was concerned about the economy overheating, but now growth has become the top priority. While it is probably better to build a theme park than more empty highways, a second Disneyland might prove to be one too many.

– At the time of publication Wei Gu did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. She may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. —

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own —

If current trends continue, China might swing to a trade deficit in the not-too-distant future. Given that China has enjoyed more than a decade of strong exports, this may sound a bit far-fetched. But even if it happens, this would not necessarily be something for the world to worry about.

Some economists have recently sounded alarm bells about the possibility of a Chinese trade deficit. They argue that if the Chinese current account surplus shrinks, it would leave Beijing with less spare cash to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Then who would fund the U.S. budget deficit — and, by implication, U.S. consumers?

Those worries are largely misplaced. First, it is unlikely to happen any time soon. In order for China to have a trade deficit next year, imports would have to outgrow — or shrink less than — exports by at least 23 percentage points.

In August, exports fell 23.4 percent while imports fell 17 percent. So while the trade surplus is diminishing, a deficit is not around the corner.

If China’s trade surplus shrinks, it will most likely be caused by a contracting U.S. deficit, in which case Americans will be saving more and the U.S. will be less dependent on overseas investors to finance its government debt. That would be a sign that the long-overdue rebalancing of the global economy was beginning to take place.

It would not be so bad for the Chinese economy either, because China is a lot less dependent on exports than many people assume. Although exports have accounted for a whopping 50 percent of the economy in the past few years, the contribution of net exports to economic growth is actually much smaller, because a lot of what China sells abroad is low value-added assembly work.

In the same way, one cannot just look at China’s large imports number and jump to the conclusion that China is a big end-user of the world’s goods. China’s imports accounted for a third of its gross domestic product last year, versus about 17 percent in the U.S. during the same period. But this is because a lot of what China imports, such as computer parts, eventually finds its way abroad.

On average, net exports contributed 1.4 percentage points to annual GDP growth between 1979 and 2007, according to the Statistics Bureau, much less than the contribution from the other two drivers — consumption and investment.

The transition to a more balanced trade account will take time. In particular, it will need a push from foreign exchange reforms, as the currently undervalued yuan encourages exports and discourages imports. China allowed the yuan to rise gradually for a few years after 2005, but has re-pegged it to the dollar since the start of the credit crisis.

It will take time before Beijing is confident enough to remove some of the export incentives, or at least not pile them up as it has done in response to the crisis. A more equalised trade account will probably not hurt China’s overall growth that much, but will help in making the world economy more balanced.

– At the time of publication Wei Gu did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. She may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund —

– Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own —

It is hard to be very optimistic about China’s proposed stock market for start-up companies. After all, similar attempts in other countries have a decidedly mixed track record. Why would China, where small private companies face an uphill battle against state-owned firms, be any exception?

Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that the start-up market, set to debut in October, offers better potential than previous efforts in Singapore, Germany and Hong Kong.

The country has a big reservoir of fast-growing small companies with real profits. In the past, they have opted for listing on foreign exchanges such as the Nasdaq. Though they were attracted by the prestige of a foreign listing, they also faced a home market that favors size over quality.

Indeed, China, home of internet stars such as Baidu and Sina, is the second-largest foreign supplier of companies to the Nasdaq.

But the exodus has almost ground to a halt. Beijing has tightened its grip on foreign listings because it wants to keep the best growth companies at home. Only companies which already have overseas structures can list their shares abroad, but even then they have to jump through a lot of regulatory hoops.

Obtaining a domestic listing will become much easier, as Beijing has ambitious plans to float hundreds of companies on the new market each year. Maintenance fees are lower and disclosure requirements are less stringent when listing at home.

And companies will not necessarily need to compromise on valuations, since Chinese equities routinely trade at a premium to their foreign counterparts because there is a lot of liquidity chasing a limited pool of stocks.

Although institutional participation is likely to be limited because the small size of most start-up companies, the new market is expected to draw in a large amount of retail investors who favor more volatile small-caps.

No wonder that about 150 companies have already lined up to list on the new market. With a potential universe of 50,000 private companies nationwide, there will be no shortage of new supply in the next few years.

Chinese stock market regulators are wary of the lack of success by Western countries in creating markets capable of funding early-stage companies. Easdaq, Europe’s answer to the Nasdaq, rumbled along for years before finally disappearing. Germany’s Neuer Markt, launched during the dot-com boom, soared and then collapsed along with the rest of the stock market bubble.

In an effort to make a good start, the regulator has picked companies with the best track record of sales and profit growth for the first batch of listings. Most of them already qualify to list on the market for small-and medium-size companies, which is also part of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The first 13 companies to go public almost look a bit too old-fashioned, with leading positions in markets such as railway transport electricity systems, lithium batteries, and medical devices. However, being boring is actually better than being too adventurous at this stage.

China has set the standards for listing on the new market much higher than Hong Kong’s growth enterprise market to avoid overly speculative companies. Like the Nasdaq, China requires companies to have a three-year operating record and a history of profitability.

Yet while it is good to set the bar high, it is even more important to keep it there by de-listing companies promptly if they fail to comply with listing rules.

One of the major reasons that the mainland market has a lot of moribund companies is because the regulator does not force de-listing. American exchanges de-list hundreds of companies a year.

Beijing has finally given the green light to the market for start-up companies after 10 years in preparation because it understands that small private companies, the most vibrant sector of the economy, will be the drivers of China’s next stage of growth. It also does not want to wait until the market gets too hot as then will be more speculative behavior.

Most of these markets suffer because they cannot attract a sufficient number of long-term institutional investors, so they end up as either illiquid or relying on much more speculative retail investors. This will be an even bigger problem in the retail-driven Chinese market.

Although the start-up market is necessary to provide some much-needed funding for small enterprises, Beijing should avoid getting too ambitious. There were initial talks about bringing as many as 500 companies public a year. But at that speed, disclosure and approval standards will inevitably be compromised.

The low success rate of markets for start-up companies has underscored the importance of not getting carried away. Early investors will walk away at the first sign of disappointment, and the markets are rarely granted a second chance. China should concentrate on getting off to a good start and build it up its new market slowly.

– At the time of publication Wei Gu did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. She may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund —

(Editing by David Evans)

– Neal Kimberley is an FX market analyst for Reuters. The opinions expressed are his own –

Twenty-four years ago, major nations called for depreciation of the dollar to rebalance the global economy. Now, as another effort at rebalancing looms, the dollar will again bear the brunt — though officials will try to ensure its fall is less dramatic this time.

That’s the implication of President Barack Obama’s announcement this week that he will push world leaders for a new global “framework” in which the United States would cut its huge trade and budget deficits.

Agreeing on this framework would be politically difficult, since it would require policy changes by many countries — China, for example, would probably have to rein in its explosive export-led growth.

But as the euro’s climb to a new one-year high versus the dollar this morning shows, markets are starting to think the rebalancing process may start as soon as this week’s Pittsburgh summit of leaders from the Group of 20 nations.

The Plaza Accord of 1985 called for “orderly appreciation of the main non-dollar currencies against the dollar”; it was followed by central banks’ coordinated intervention to ensure that happened.

This time, with the world shakily emerging from a financial crisis, policymakers are likely to try to manage the dollar’s drop in a more low-key fashion.

They are unlikely to issue an explicit call for the dollar to fall. In fact, the U.S. Treasury may continue proclaiming its “strong dollar policy” in an attempt to keep the markets calm.

No one in the G20 wants to risk a freefall of the dollar that could disrupt global trade as it recovers from recession. And in contrast to the 1980s, developing nations such as China are now challenging the dollar’s long-term role as the world’s top reserve currency.

The dollar’s premier status helps the United States to obtain foreign capital and in order to keep that access, Washington is likely to encourage central banks around the world to continue holding dollars. This would require slow depreciation of the currency rather than a panicky slide.

So unless policymakers completely lose control of the forex markets — which cannot entirely be ruled out — the dollar’s slide is likely to be slower and smaller than it was after the Plaza Accord, when the currency sank about 50 percent versus the yen between Sept. 22, 1985 and the end of 1987.

The overall direction of the dollar does not look in doubt, however. Top presidential adviser Lawrence Summers has said he wants a U.S. economy that is “more export-oriented and less consumption-oriented”.

A lower dollar is a logical tool to achieve that goal, and letting the currency weaken would probably be faster and easier than most other big policy steps to reshape the U.S. economy, such as tax changes and health reform.

The International Monetary Fund, which is advising G20 nations on economy policy, is hinting heavily at the need for currency realignment.

In a report released this week, it said “current policies and the assumed constellation of exchange rates may not be sufficient for the needed rebalancing of demand.”

It added that policy reforms by the world’s big economies to restore growth “would be more effective if accompanied by a real effective renminbi appreciation, offset by euro and dollar depreciation”.

An international understanding on dollar depreciation may well not be reached in Pittsburgh. A French official said last Friday that Pittsburgh would merely set the stage for future talks on foreign exchange rates.

“At this stage there will not be currency discussions, but the framework that we hope to put in place…is a way of discussing later the question of exchange rates,” said the official, who declined to be named.

But giving China and other developing countries more power in the IMF and the World Bank could be part of an informal quid pro quo in which China quietly undertook to resume appreciating the yuan against the dollar.

The rise of the euro as high as $1.4821, breaking the December 2008 peak of $1.4719, is a technical signal that the market thinks the dollar is increasingly vulnerable.

For many traders, the break suggests a good chance of a rise to at least the psychologically important level of $1.50 in coming weeks or months.

The European Central Bank might seek to limit speculation against the dollar by expressing concern about such a move. But the market does not appear to worry that the ECB could actually intervene to support the dollar.

When the European Union’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said last week that excessive appreciation of the euro could hurt Europe’s economy, the euro fell back only marginally and briefly.

The market knows that even at levels just above $1.5000, the euro would remain well below its all-time high against the dollar of $1.6038, hit in July 2008.

And any rise of the euro against the dollar in the current circumstances would probably be seen by policymakers as the result of general dollar weakness, not excessive euro strength. When euro/dollar reached its July 2008 peak, euro/yen hit a similar high; now, euro/yen is a full 35 yen lower.

The Japanese may also be willing to see their currency strengthen. Before new Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii took office this month, he said a strong yen was generally good as it boosted the purchasing power of Japanese.

Fujii subsequently backed away from that comment, but speculation will remain that after sweeping to power last month, the Democratic Party of Japan may try to shift the country away from its reliance on exports and its opposition to yen strength.

In the context of a G20 drive to rebalance the global economy, this could easily cause the market to think the yen should be trading stronger than 90 to the dollar.

(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

The simplest way to end the imbalances in the world’s economy is also sadly perhaps the most likely: for the Chinese to stop buying U.S. debt.

This is not going to happen anytime soon, for one thing deleveraging in the U.S. will for a time make U.S. Treasuries look good value, but a buyer’s strike is a heck of a lot more likely than the orchestrated rebalancing the U.S. will push at this week’s G-20 meeting of leading nations.

The U.S. plans to advance a plan at the Pittsburgh summit to fundamentally change the balance of the global economy, which over the past 15 years or so has been characterized by over-borrowing and consumption in the West provided and financed by savers and workers in Asia.

That state of play kept going, as is the way of these things, until it stopped, or rather until one of its wheels fell off. It wasn’t that Asians stopped saving or buying U.S. debt but that speculators, usually in Europe, stopped buying securities, often minted in London, which were being created to front run the flow of capital from Asia to the west.

That popped the asset price bubble and the flow of finance to consumers in the U.S. who, with much gnashing of teeth, began to save again and consume more guardedly.

But the debt bubble hasn’t really popped, it has only shifted shape. Before we had private debts which only could be repaid if assets, mostly real estate, continued to go up in value. Now, a new wave of public borrowing is cushioning the downturn. Asians buy some of the debt and some of the money raised buys goods from Asia.

Theoretically, China and other investors in U.S.  Treasuries buy them because they believe that the U.S. will ultimately tax more, spend less and make good. In reality, it is more vendor financing and a good money after bad attempt to protect earlier investments.

The U.S. points out, in a letter to its G20 partners, that if the savings rises in the deficit countries persist and there is no rise in consumption in the savings-bloc, global economic growth will be poor. The idea, it seems, is for IMF-led international coordination to, on the one hand, jawbone the borrowers so they remain credible while at the same time somehow inducing the savers to allow their currencies to appreciate and induce their citizens to spend.

WILL SOVEREIGNS BE THE NEW SUBPRIME?

A new study of global imbalances by economists at the Bank of England points out that Asian savers will only carry on buying western debt so long as they believe it to be high quality.

“In the short run, increased supply of government bonds resulting from the expansionary fiscal policies pursued in deficit countries has provided an ongoing source of asset supply to meet the investment demand from surplus countries,” according to the Bank of England.

“However, to the extent that savers in surplus countries may become more reluctant over time to invest funds in deficit-country government bonds this would tend to raise the cost of borrowing in deficit countries. This shift in the relative cost of borrowing could be an important part of the process by which a rebalancing of demand from deficit to surplus countries is achieved over the medium term.”

In other words, if Asian savers lose faith in Treasuries or gilts, they will stop buying, causing interest rates to spike. This would cause demand to be rebalanced, all right, but mostly by suppressing it in the U.S. and other highly indebted countries like Britain.

This kind of loss of faith in markets can be very sudden. You could draw a parallel to the way in which investors in securitized debt lost faith in the value of a AAA rating, except this time the loss of faith will be in sovereign borrowers and we really will not be able to blame the ratings agencies as enablers.

China and other exporters of course have good reason to want to avoid this. They are stuck with trillions of dollars in Treasuries and they certainly don’t want to kill the U.S. goose while it is still more profitable to sell it goose food.

There may also come a time when the world’s savers calculate that they can earn more by investing at home.

Essentially much of what a controlled rebalancing would do - weaken the dollar and build opportunity for domestic-oriented investment in Asia - creates incentives for a rapid reallocation out of Treasuries.

Ultimately the rebalanceing must happen. The U.S. for very good reasons wants this to happen little by little, but it does not have to happen that way. Past attempts at a controlled rebalancing have failed and it is hard to see what will make this one different.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.)

- Wei Gu is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are her own. -

The U.S.-China tire dispute threatens to spill into other sectors and squeeze Chinese exporters’ already razor-thin margins further. It might seem mind-boggling to many that Chinese manufacturers are still hanging on to weak overseas markets even though the domestic economy looks much healthier and surely offers more potential.

But there are structural reasons why the grass is greener outside China. The risk of not getting paid, or getting paid late, is significantly lower when dealing with foreign buyers. The cost of international shipping has dropped so much that it can be cheaper to send goods over the Pacific Ocean than across the country.

In addition, selling to large buyers such as Wal-Mart creates volumes large enough to compensate for weak margins. Moreover, Chinese exporters get all sorts of export rebates and local government incentives which help to lower their costs.

But as the tire spat has illustrated, Washington can slap punitive duties on Chinese imports simply by pointing to a significant increase in imports from China. By imposing penalties in this case, President Obama has opened the door for a slew of similar complaints against Chinese goods. It will only be a matter of time before other countries, worried about where those displaced Chinese exports might end up, start to follow suit.

That’s why Chinese policy makers need to get more serious about stimulating domestic spending. It is time for Beijing to revamp a system built over the past three decades that explicitly and implicitly favours exports and to encourage manufacturers to prioritise selling to the domestic market.

A good first step would be to reduce some of the export incentives China offers to certain industries. These effectively subsidise foreign consumers at the expense of domestic customers. For example, Chinese tyre-makers get a tax rebate of about 9 percent on the value of the products they sell abroad. That’s why tyre makers can afford to price exported tyres more cheaply than ones sold at home, according to Xu Qiyuan, a researcher at China’s Social Science Academy.

To date, however, China’s response to the credit crunch has been to boost incentives to prop up export markets. Beijing raised export rebates on 3,802 items from April 1. Textile exporters also got an increase in their rebate to 16 percent from 15 percent. This activity is not illegitimate and many countries subsidise exports. But the U.S. enforcement action shows that this policy may have practical limits.

China needs more than just a change of heart on subsidies. Longer term, Beijing needs to foster the development of a healthy credit culture for suppliers so they can get paid on time, and to improve China’s transportation infrastructure in order to reduce the cost of moving goods around the country, and most importantly, to break down local protectionism that discriminates against suppliers from other provinces. It may seem odd but China needs to create a single internal market.

Despite all the talk about Chinese consumers being unwilling to spend due to a lack of a social safety net, one important reason that they don’t buy much at home is because prices are often too high . When “frugal” Chinese consumers go to Hong Kong or London, they immediately become big spenders, splashing out thousands of dollars on clothing, cosmetics, bags and watches. The irony is that a lot of the things they buy are actually made in China, but are simply not available there, or cost much more.

Moreover, the lack of a single market hampers foreign companies seeking to sell to China. Although foreign executives might fancy China as a giant market with 1.3 billion customers, the reality is that it is extremely fragmented, so economies of scale are hard to achieve. Transporting goods from one province to another can incur hefty tolls levied by local governments keen to raise local revenue and make it harder for companies to break into their local markets.

The credit problem also needs to be addressed. Big Chinese retailers only pay for goods on delivery. An exporter, by contrast, gets a letter of credit when the order is placed, and this can be cashed in to finance production.

China’s rebalancing away from export dependence has barely begun, and it will take a long time to change attitudes. But now would be a good time to make a start. The recent trade disputes over Chinese tyres and toys should serve as warning shots. China’s leaders must start to make the domestic market more friendly to suppliers and consumers.

– At the time of publication Wei Gu did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. She may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund —

–James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own–

If and when China makes its currency convertible and opens its financial system the stage will be set for a bubble that should make the dotcom and housing booms look tame.

China has recently signaled its key aspirations: for a greater international role for the renminbi and for Shanghai to become a great financial capital. Neither is imminent, but both imply, if not require, a series of steps that, taken in combination with China’s legitimately great potential for growth, could lead to a bubble of magnificent and dangerous proportions.

Magnificent in that, like the dotcom bubble or the railroad boom in the U.S. in the 19th century, a bubble in domestic China is directionally right and will build useful things which will change the world. A bubble, after all, needs a good story and China has one of the best ever.

Dangerous because, like the housing bubble, it will inevitably go too far and could take down banks and banking systems globally.

Perhaps rather than dotcom or housing, the most useful template for China is closer to home; namely the Japanese bubble which preceded its ongoing malaise, according to Dylan Grice, a strategist at Societe Generale in London.

“In the medium term we face the mother of all asset bubbles in China. The fundamental story is a good one; there are just lots and lots of people to sell to,” Grice said.

“If you drop a ton of liquidity on people it is possible that they will do rational things with it, but more likely they will do something pretty stupid.”

The parallels are strong. Both China and Japan successfully industrialized and opted for high-savings, low-consumption economies which concentrated on exports, exporting capital and keeping their currencies artificially weak. The result in both cases was a huge stockpile of U.S. Treasuries.

Both, too, scared their western clients and competitors witless. Remember U.S. autoworkers ritually burning Japanese cars? This of course was mingled with admiration and a sense that the global balance of power was changing, giving bubble thinking a strong push.

Japan slowly and over a long period liberalized its capital account; allowing the yen to float freely and deregulating financial markets.

Grice points out that during some of the 1980s the world fell in love with the yen, figuring that Japan’s new ascendancy meant that it would rise and rise. As a result Japan Inc. could in effect borrow in dollars, swap it into yen and get paid for the privilege. Much of the money found its way into the stock market, sending stocks to stratospheric levels and reinforcing the bubble illusion.

The Nikkei index of stocks went to the moon and Tokyo residents ended up needing 100-year mortgages to afford tiny apartments.

GOOD AND BAD BUBBLES

Of course, that is not where it ended with Japan, which had its bust and which is still struggling with deflation, though that is in part a function of a shrinking workforce.

Japan liberalized its financial system and currency arrangements under strong pressure from the United States.

China almost certainly has more relative real power today and there is every sign that it will open up on its own terms and to its own schedule.

But open it probably will.

Chinese officials have expressed a desire for the renminbi to play a great role in world trade, naming 2020 as a date by which it can play the role of a reserve currency.

That is almost certainly going to require deregulation of financial markets, something also needed if Shanghai is to become a global financial capital.

China now buys Treasuries not because it thinks they are good value, but because those purchases maintain a competitive currency, not to mention protecting existing holdings. As that ends, much of the money will seek out high returns, and as the renminbi strengthens international capital will doubtless pile on and pile in.

That kind of liquidity and deregulation, in combination with strong national pride and a legitimately fantastic story, is a step-by-step recipe for a bubble. So it proved in Japan, so it likely will be in China.

A look at recent experience in China only underlines this. Speculation is rife and billions in government mandated loans have leaked into stock market bets.

China’s government undoubtedly understands all of this and is surely determined to maintain control. They may not find it that easy. Getting rich, as we’ve seen in the United States, is a heady business and it is easy to start to believe your own press.

As the momentum builds and the money rolls in it will be easy to see it as a great country meeting its prosperous destiny.

Given the size of the opportunity and the strength of the story, China’s bubble will be huge. Investors would do well to avoid being in the immediate vicinity when it bursts.

–At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.–

— Rafael Ramírez is the James Martin Senior Research Fellow in Futures at Oxford University and author of “Business Planning for Turbulent Times: New Methods for Applying Scenarios” edited with John W. Selsky and Kees van der Heijden. Ramírez attended a session at the World Economic Forum’s gathering in Dalian, China, on managing global risks.

Reuters asked Ramírez to elaborate on five overlooked risks the world is confronting as it works its way through the current recession. His response is below. The views expressed are his own.

Risk one: Confusing risk with uncertainty

The first — and perhaps most important risk — is confusing categories of ignorance. This most centrally is about confusing risk with uncertainty. It entails pretending that probability (with data sets of past events with distributions of occurrence which are relevant for the future) is relevant for both “known unknowns” one cannot model with probability as well as unknown unknowns in one’s plausible futures where no data set is available, such as those of unique events.

Unfortunately, while the uncertainty that we became aware of as the financial crisis unfolded did not obey to the characteristics of “risk”, a lot of the policy interventions and “solutions” that were put in place pretended that the risks were known — and thus are well positioned to create new trouble. What we need to do instead is accepting that uncertain ignorance - for which forecasting, probability and risk are irrelevant - is now a common characteristic of our environment, and that we need technologies based on plausibility, like scenario planning. Plausibility is not going to be easy to implant in large organizations with established teams whose livelihood depends upon calculation of probability - but is necessary.

Risk two: Failure to link different types of knowledge

A second under-explored risk is keeping different forms of knowledge disconnected. This is typically manifested as keeping knowledge in the organizations that develop and use knowledge (like universities, corporations, or patent offices) in silos, while also ignoring that different scales create difficulty to translate applicability from small to large contexts and vice-versa. Failure to link different types of knowledge together, and to organize the architectures that enable this, prevents effective action. So the risk is that insufficient conversations linking different forms of knowledge will be made available, and that “solutions” in one context create (bigger) problems in others that have not been consulted.

Risk Three: Finding false comfort in “solutions”

A third important risk is the ongoing and often unquestioned over-dependence on the comfort of “solution”. The promised comfort in any one solution leads people addressing complex messes to construe these as a single problem that, once solved, will be OK.  The emotional appeal of “solution-security” is highly misleading, and way too often the “solution provider” over-promises and under-delivers. For example, the “solution” confidence to develop and do well after “winning a war” has led to terrible approaches to deal with messes such as poverty, drugs, and terrorism. The “wars” that have been declared on poverty, drugs, and terrorism have not only not delivered the promised solutions but have also mis-fired and created even messier messes.

Risk Four: Pushing irreversible solutions

A fourth under-attended to risk is promoting irreversible designs. Uncertain complexity in our contexts means that what we do may be the wrong thing to do if the context changes. So designing irreversible options is the only responsible thing to do. Certain forms of bioengineering such as some GMO crops and toxic cocktails of insecticides and herbicides have created conditions in the countryside (such as the collapse of honeybee colonies) that may well be irreversible, and which would be terrible if scenarios for which they were not designed unfold.

Risk Five: Giving too much priority to the short-term

Finally, the form of discounting that is used to value things is highly risky. The short-term is  given far higher priority in relation to long-term effects than sustainable solutions call for. Contextualising the short-term in long-term implications is one of the key challenges to design better governance than we have today.

–James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.–

Financial markets have plenty to be worried about but their latest concern — a trade war between the United States and China — should not be on the list.

Aligned self interest and a knowledge on both sides of the causes of the Great Depression should limit matters to a kind of trade war Kabuki, a highly stylized piece of theatre in which the United States shakes its fist and China responds in kind but no blows land.

The Obama administration on Friday slapped tariffs of 35 percent on the import of auto tires from China, reacting to a surge in imports and complaints from the United Steelworkers union. It also acted on the recommendation of the independent U.S. International Trade Commission.

China duly responded, announcing investigations into subsidies made to U.S. chicken producers and auto products, as well as vowing to take its case to the World Trade Organization.

Shares around the world sold off on Monday at least partly in response to the dispute, which awakened memories of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the trade war that ensued, a key cause of the Great Depression.

What’s worse, the United States is not just spitting into the wind of history but also into the face of its largest creditor. China holds about $1.8 trillion of Treasuries and any decision on their part to lighten up would send the dollar into a steep decline and torpedo U.S. plans to fund its fiscal deficit.

That’s just it. The United States and China need one another, and both sides are big enough and mature enough to understand this. China cannot dump U.S. investments without walloping its own portfolio, nor can either side accomplish any of their economic goals without the other as a client.

It is best to understand the U.S. move not as the first salvo in a war, but as a relatively small sop thrown to a domestic constituency, organized labor, that President Obama needs for other purposes, notably health care. It is also, in an odd way, a sign not of weakness but of the stabilization of the global economy. It is only now that things have calmed down that the United States would dare to appease a domestic special interest in this way. Had they done this in February, financial markets would have fallen over in a dead swoon.

The dollar, tellingly, actually rose as a first reaction to the fuss, hardly the reaction you would expect if the Chinese were preparing to dump dollars. Treasuries lost ground, but nothing extraordinary.

STUPID BUT PROBABLY HARMLESS

Technically, the United States is probably within its rights to impose the duties. WTO rules allow this if a surge in imports threatens a domestic industry, even if the trade is not unfair.

Rights and laws aside, the duties are indefensible. They protect less efficient makers and simply punish China, not for unfair trade practices, but for success. They also punish U.S. consumers, arguably hurting living standards more than the loss of the jobs the tariffs are presumably meant to protect.

Expect China to make a lot of noise about this. They also have domestic audiences, and theirs are rightly aggrieved. Expect too the rest of the G20 leaders who will assemble this week in Pittsburgh to say all the right things in public and to play peacemakers in private.

What I would not expect is for this to accelerate into something damaging and destabilizing. The stakes are too high and the political rewards domestically for a trade war are tiny in comparison.

There are, however, longer-term issues which are unsettling. China’s interests and those of the United States are diverging and over time there will be serious conflicts to be negotiated. The system of China trading goods for Treasuries which did so much to raise living standards in China and fill garages with stuff in the United States is no longer tenable.

The U.S. will consume less of China’s stuff and must even compete with China more effectively for exports, probably in areas like military technology where sales will be doubly unsettling for the Chinese.

China, over time, will not want to subsidize U.S. borrowing rates and will want to diversify its currency holdings. This will not be easy or pleasant for the United States but, broadly speaking, is probably in its own long-term interests.

All of this could blow up, especially if it undermines confidence in Treasuries and the dollar. It has not yet, and I think the two protagonists will put off the serious business of working out their conflicting interests until either the global economy returns to robust growth or things in the United States stay bad long enough to change the political math of a real trade war.

We are not there yet, and for at least another year probably won’t be.

–At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.–