[Spain's Pain] Photo gallery by the New York Times

[Simon_Jester]

One thing with that graph.

Could it be that China's economy really can absorb massive per capita cement consumption? Maybe not enough to stop this from becoming a bubble, but enough to keep it from being as bad as Spain's? Remember, the country had effectively zero modern infrastructure fifty years ago; they have a lot of building to do. It might not wreck them to try and build the infrastructure of a 15000$ per capita country before their GDP hits 7500$ per capita, as long as they remember to stop.

Which is of course the hard part. And where, if the Chinese break down, I'd bet on them breaking down- their economy is managed in such a way that knowing when to stop is difficult.

[K. A. Pital]

Pretty much what I said - if cement is absorbed for stuff that's going to work, the problem is not that huge. However, a stop is inevitable (see Japan). Capitalism can only give so much. Even the super-centralized version that the CPC employs.