Interesting article...not familiar with Michael Pillsbury, or his intentions. I personally doubt we have anything to fear from a bullets and tanks perspective, except perhaps the loss of sales of bullets and tanks...
As a side note, having experience teaching at a local public university and recognizing the need for some diversity, I was always surprised by the excessive number of foreign students we let into our schools, at the expense of local residents.  There is the historical perspective that these "best minds" from foreign worlds would stay and help the good ole USA, but from my experience in the current environment, more of these students would eventually head back home. 

China‘s secret plan to topple the US as the world’s superpower

February 8, 2015 | 6:00am

In 1995, Michael Pillsbury, an expert on China who has worked with every US president since Nixon and has, he writes, “arguably had more access to China’s military and intelligence establishment than any other Westerner,” was reading an article written by “three of China’s preeminent military experts” about “new technologies that would contribute to the defeat of the United States.”

http://nypost.com/2015/02/08/chinas-secret-plan-to-topple-the-us-as-the-worlds-superpower/

Peach bum pants crack the Chinese fruit market
Media in China report that vendors are dressing peaches in tiny knickers to mark the upcoming Qixi festival

Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings Ltd. (551), the world’s largest branded shoemaker, fell the most in nine months in Hong Kong trading after the company said it plans to increase factory workers’ compensation in a bid to end a strike. (...)

Workers at the shoemaker, a supplier to companies including Adidas AG (ADS) and Nike Inc. (NKE), continued to strike for a seventh day, disrupting output, spokesman George Liu said today. Yue Yuen, based in Hong Kong, offered to add a monthly living allowance of 230 yuan ($37) at its factories in southern China starting May 1, Liu said yesterday. It also agreed to bring forward to next month a social-security benefit plan originally scheduled for 2015, he said.

Workers have disrupted production in Yue Yuen’s Dongguan factory complex, which employs more than 40,000 people, since April 14 in a dispute over pay, benefits and the right to pick their own union. More than 50 percent of the workers were on strike today, Liu said. China Labour Watch, which estimated the striking workers at about 30,000, said a small number had returned to work, without quantifying it.

Employees were seen coming to the plant, clocking in and then leaving yesterday. Some workers, who asked not to be identified because they or their family members could lose their jobs, said yesterday that they were still on strike.

Rising Costs

The labor dispute adds challenges to Chinese manufacturers faced with disruptions as wages climb and workers demand better compensation. Rising costs have also prompted some employers to move production abroad.

Employees interviewed at the factory yesterday and on April 19 said the company had failed to agree on demands for more pay, a change in contract status and reimbursement for unpaid benefits contributions. Some demanded no punishment for strikers and the right to elect their own union leaders.

At least 80 percent of the workers won’t take the offer, said Xiang Feng, 28, a worker in the factory’s finance department. The company’s plan to raise monthly contributions for social security would make it compulsory for employees to boost their own share of payments, she said.

“Workers may end up with a take-home salary almost unchanged or maybe even lower than before,” Xiang said.

More Demands

The strikers expanded demands after an initial dispute over contributions to government-mandated social security and housing benefits for workers. The local government is fully aware and supportive of Yue Yuen’s proposed plan, Liu said.

Monitoring group China Labour Bulletin said on its website strikers at the Dongguan facility numbered at least 10,000, while Yue Yuen said April 16 that more than 1,000 were striking. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. faced strikes earlier this year in China by workers demanding better compensation. (...)

 RichardPrins wrote: 
does that make them more expensive or less expensive? 

 RichardPrins wrote: 
Well, it was just a matter of time.

via

Big Web Crash in China: Experts Suspect Great Firewall - NYTimes.com

The story behind what may have been the biggest Internet failure in history involves an unlikely cast of characters, including a little-known company in a drab building in Wyoming and the world’s most elite army of Internet censors a continent away in China.

On Tuesday, most of China’s 500 million Internet users were unable to load websites for up to eight hours. Nearly every Chinese user and Internet company, including major services like Baidu and Sina.com, was affected. (...)

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Although there isn't any standard definition, it has never really been all/only about military prowess. Economical factors play a very important part, as well as projection of power on a global scale (can be military, economic, or propaganda/ideology), along with substantial control. They do all go hand in hand (and rely on each other).

China would meet economic and (perhaps) military criteria, but not in ideology/propaganda or (global) control. As this story shows it has enough worries dealing with domestic control.

 RichardPrins wrote: 
what's all this rot about the USA being the only superpower?

superpower isn't all about military prowess like it used to be...

China blocks CBC website after story about offshore accounts
The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and parts of BBC also unavailable on mainland

ICIJ Reveals China's Elite's Offshore Trillion-Dollar Offshore Holdings: Five Takeaways
 
Quick learners...

 buzz wrote: 

 RichardPrins wrote: 
i would like to see pics/vid of actual Chinese authorities actually fighting with the giant naked Buddhas.

Chinese authorities fight two giant naked Buddhas in Jinan | GlobalPost

Chinese government: smog has at least five benefits

1. It unifies the Chinese people.
2. It makes China more equal.
3. It raises citizen awareness of the cost of China’s economic development.
4. It makes people funnier.
5. It makes people more knowledgeable (of things like meteorology and the English word haze).
 

The Banality of Televised Anti-Chinese Racism
Recent incidents on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and on Holland's Got Talent reveal the persistence of casual bigotry—intended or not—toward China and Chinese people.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/11/15/china_reforms_one_child_policy_little_siblings_coming.html

China Ends One-Child Policy

China's Most Effective Whistleblowers? Mistresses
15 percent of people reporting corruption are the disgruntled “other women” of wealthy and powerful men.

How young women in China become mistresses – James Palmer – Aeon
Mistresses are big business in China, where no official is a real man without his own ernai. What’s in it for the girls?

The birth of the 'de-Americanized' world

This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It's time to build a "de-Americanized" world. It's time for a "new international reserve currency" to replace the US dollar.

It's all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon's mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts - and that applies especially to the Washington elites. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Long gone are the Deng Xiaoping days of "keeping a low profile". The Xinhua editorial summarizes the straw that broke the dragon's back - the current US shutdown. After the Wall Street-provoked financial crisis, after the war on Iraq, a "befuddled world", and not only China, wants change.

This paragraph couldn't be more graphic:

Instead of honoring its duties as a responsible leading power, a self-serving Washington has abused its superpower status and introduced even more chaos into the world by shifting financial risks overseas, instigating regional tensions amid territorial disputes, and fighting unwarranted wars under the cover of outright lies.

The solution, for Beijing, is to "de-Americanize" the current geopolitical equation - starting with more say in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for emerging economies and the developing world, leading to a "new international reserve currency that is to be created to replace the dominant US dollar".

Note that Beijing is not advocating completely smashing the Bretton Woods system - at least for now, but it is for having more deciding power. Sounds reasonable, considering that China holds slightly more weight inside the IMF than Italy. IMF "reform" - sort of - has been going on since 2010, but Washington, unsurprisingly, has vetoed anything substantial.

As for the move away from the US dollar, it's also already on, in varying degrees of speed, especially concerning trade amongst the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which is now overwhelmingly in their respective currencies. The US dollar is slowly but surely being replaced by a basket of currencies. (...)