Phil's right, the Chinese Communist Party is probably hiding the real ugly truth to avoid civil unrest. We're only seeing the surface ripples while the financial tsunami is building underneath. My guess is that many of the large state owned banks are at or near insolvency due to their massive and corrupt real estate speculations over the last two decades. Graft and corruption at every level of government rules the Chinese real estate market. If my assumptions are right, and their economy is close to collapse then that is a huge danger to China, but also to the rest of the world -- not only militarily, but also financially.