James Kynge

A lot of people, policymakers, just can't get why the U.S.

is being so aggressive on this point.

They feel that there's a pathway to greater U.S.

influence on Greenland that takes a peaceful route rather than talking about some kind of military overture.

My hot take is that this data shows yet again what a highly lopsided economy China is.

And I think there are two numbers that absolutely show this so clearly that it's so stark.

There is one great strength in the Chinese economy and there is one, well, there are several weaknesses that lead to a particular weakness.

The great strength is that China is a high-tech manufacturing powerhouse

that increasingly inspires awe around the world.

And yet, the weakness is that its economy is so poor at directing the fruits of this advancement to its people that the birth rate that we've seen in China last year has fallen to its lowest level since 1949.

That's the communist revolution of 1949.

So, you know, we've got these two amazing things going on.

This hard-charging technological superpower now, which is a peer competitor of the U.S.

in technology and an economy that can't even return the fruits of labor, as it were, to people so that they feel that they can have families and have as many kids as they like.

So the two numbers that I'd like to mention are high-tech manufacturing output that rose 9.4% last year.

And the other number on the other side is retail sales, which grew only 3.7%.

So what you've got is high-tech manufacturing growing at more than double the speed of the amount of money that people are spending on things to buy.

And I think that really sums up the great contradiction of the Chinese economy.

But you'll have your own view on this, Alice.

Yeah, I think it all boils down to a very simple equation.