World watches China, grass is green

A few quick sundry items:

1. I love this quote:

“The Chinese are probably the best capitalists that communism will ever have given birth to.”

That was said by one Michelle Applebaum, head of an independent steel equity research firm in Chicago, in a Feb. 2 New York Times article about Chinalco + Alcoa’s surprise purchase of a 12% stake in Rio Tinto, the world’s third-largest mining company.

2.  I’ve been quite slow to blog this, but James Fallows wrote a great article for the Atlantic Monthly that spells out, in a very clear and easy-to-understand way, why the US and Chinese economies are so mutually dependent, and what the worst-case-scenario outcome of that relationship could be:

The $1.4 Trillion Question: The Chinese are subsidizing the American way of life. Are we playing them for suckers—or are they playing us?