China: Will It Break Apart?

Think things can't get worse? Just pay attention to growing civil unrest in China. I am. And so is economist Dani Rodrik:

Will China hold together? China is a country of enormous tensions and cleavages beneath the surface, and these will find more occasion to erupt into open conflict in difficult economic times. Experts on China differ in their estimate of the rate of economic growth the country needs to create employment for the millions that flock into its urban areas every year. But it is virtually certain that China will fall short of this threshold in 2009. The question is whether policy actions to date will do enough to stem a socially and politically dangerous slowdown in the economy.  Whichever way the Chinese leadership responds, future generations may remember 2009 less for its global economic and financial crisis than for the momentous transformation it will have caused in China.