Dear United States of America RE: Debt to China

Yeah, it sucks to be in so much debt but the Chinese people are the real losers. The Chinese basically keep the value of the American dollar artificially high vs. the Yuan so they can export more cheaply to the U.S. It works, but it also becomes more expensive to import anything of value into China. What you have, in effect, is a country with legions of unskilled labour toiling away in factories for next to nothing and not having any of the luxuries availible in the West.

The so-called burgeoning middle-class in China is such a small part of the overall Chinese economic picture that it's not even worth talking about. There is virtually no consumer economy in China because national income is tied up in either savings or investment. A bit of that is cultural but a lot of it has to do with official Communist Party doctrine in investing perpetually in production, for the mere purpose of surpassing the U.S. on paper but not offering any real benefits to its population.

If I had to choose between being Chinese now and being an American, I still think my life would be 100x better with the latter.

Jam it back in, in the dark.