A side-effect.....................

     Predicting the future of China is a mug's game.  The problem isn't just that by three o'clock on any given afternoon, someone will have published an essay entitled "China's Imminent Collapse" and someone else will have published "China:  Superpower of the Asian Century."  The problem is that both essays will be plausible.  China today is one of the very few political entities with the resources and government to shape the world as a side-effect of its actions.

-Clay Shirky,  Little Rice:  Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream