The scary thing about China is that it has a huge asset bubble, and when those pop you can have long-term pain. For instance that is what happened with Japan in the 80s. (Or us in 2008, though our relative bubble was smaller.)<p>The doubly scary thing is that this could come at a point where we have so much that is so fragile in the global economy. Obviously we have the slow-moving European debt crisis. We have the Chinese bubble. We have a plethora of distressed debtors in the USA combined with a slowing economy. If all the dominos remain standing, we're fine. If they start to fall, how many will fall?<p>See <a href="http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-26/markets/31402834_1_bubble-japanese-economy-china" rel="nofollow">http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-26/markets/31402...</a> and <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2011/11/30/why-chinas-big-red-bubble-is-ahead-of-us/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2011/11/30/wh...</a> for a couple of random takes comparing China today to Japan.