Chinese Growth is Well Balanced: A Contrarian View.

Yukon Huang, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment and a former country director for the World Bank in China has some very interesting comments in a recent article published in The Financial Times today.

Taken at face value, these have important implications for economies such as Australia and New Zealand whose exporters that are riding the tiger of the Chinese commodities boom.

China’s announcement today that inflation in May hit a three-year high of 5.5 per cent and industrial expansion exceeded expectations will buttress those who see an inevitable economic crash coming. But even those who remain confident that a soft landing is possible seem to agree that China’s economic growth is unbalanced, with these imbalances widely blamed for trade surpluses with the west. This view, however, is much exaggerated.

see The myth of China’s unbalanced growth 

The Sendai Earthquake - The Catfish Jumped

"Beneath the Japanese archipelago lies a mythical catfish, brutish and capricious. For most of the time, its head is pinned down by a granite keystone, held in place by the Shinto god of the earth. But occasionally, the god drops his guard. Then the fish thrashes, convulsing the earth."

From The Economist blog Asian View

See When the earth wobbled

One Very Big Cave - Vietnam's Hang Son Doong Cave

From the National Geographic via i09.com 
World's largest cave is big enough to fit a skyscraper and even has its own jungle
Orginal pictures
Conquering an Infinite Cave