Playing the Long Game?

Ben Bernanke is currently explaining to an influential committee how his nation is going to tackle their astronomical debt burden. Critics say that apart from printing money, the chairman of the Federal Reserve hasn’t got any other plan. The time may come, one commentator claimed on yesterday’s CNBC, when China will call in that debt, it may well that Suez moment, when America reminded Great Britain that it was no longer a Great Power in a world dominated by two superpowers. So will China remind America that it is no longer has the economy to sustain its current military adventures? And has the miltary got too much power in the People’s Republic? There is no doubt that a move get America to pull back on its military engagements would play well in the Third World, increasing the incredible amount of goodwill that it already has among the weaker nations of the world. But China, despite its vast pools of wealth is still a very poor country, with millions of people still waiting to taste that Chinese miracle everyone keeps telling them that they are part of, and worse still, those people still have to find somewhere to live, in a land where there is too many people and not enough land. Having seen how the one true superpower in the world has squandered her wealth on expensive hitech weapons fighting inconclusive wars,  there doesn’t appear to be the taste for any military confrontation either – remember China lost a million men at Korea and her last adventure resulted in a thrashing from General Giap’s Vietnamese army.  So, my guess is that Ben Bernanke is betting that China has absolutely nothing to gain from crashing the system and far too much lose also from acting as a military superpower, which means that if  America is a status quo power, then her emerging rival is no great challenger, it’s not in its interest to be so.  As a result, the chairman of the Federal Reserve isn’t going to change his strategy, which is exactly what?