It was only a matter of time before the authorities decided to crack down on Facebook. Finally they have also become tired of the never ending event notifications, status updates discussing your “friend’s” decision to go to M1NT or Bar Rouge this weekend, and the random friend requests. In all seriousness the authorities control over the “web waves” is a cause for concern. But, let’s be honest, it is more of an annoyance than anything. Stack it on top of the typical day of blazing internet speeds, and it is sure to upset expat web users.

This is not meant to be a political post, as an outsider I do not want to delve into the internal political decisions of a soveriegn nation.

I use Facebook and Twitter everyday for both work and personal use. I try not to be “spammy” on either. Some friends take me aside and ask me not to post so much, but honestly I tell them I am posting interesting current events and business articles they should be looking at. Granted most of the people that are taking me aside, don’t really understand how to use Facebook and Twitter to effectively “share” information, but they are coming around.

Yes I do post NextStep event information, but they are good informational events, not another party on the Bund. The majority of my postings point people to great current events like this article, this article and this article (oh, wait I cannot pull the links from my Facebook profile to share with you right now…I need to start bookmarking them again on my Webdexer.com)

If you want to find out more about me, you can click here to view my NextStepDirectory.com profile.  From there you can check out my Linkedin and Twitter (once it is running again).

I don’t want to be singing the bad news bears here, but it is reality people. Watch this video, and think about what it will mean for China.  RMB holders beware, there is a perfect storm aligning, and at the center of it is a banking system built like a house of playing cards. A slight breeze will send everything crumbling, and we are talking Typhoon force winds are not in our distant future.

Check out this video at YouTube to see what I am talking about. It is powerful.

Wen Jia Bao and his closest advisers are in Davos, and by all accounts it sounds as if some in media are beginning to take a more relaxed stance on China. To be honest it speaks of the times we now live in. If one day you condone the actions of a nation state, and the following you pride them for their economic achievements so that you may benefit, it makes you as a profession or nation look quite pathetic. If you have a stance and belief, keep it, please don’t peddle a flip-flopping opinions that are delivered as fact. For too long the western media and government has and still remains to look negatively upon China, and rightfully so on many levels, but what they have so conveniently left out of the stories in recent years is how they have benefited from China’s monumental rise.

Look at the facts of information decemination. It is only in the past eighteen months that media has latched onto the debt obligations the US now holds with the Near East. When times got rough and it was no longer to our (US and European) advantage to continue selling our debt at the rapid rate we had no problem with at the onset of this decade, the media and US government started speaking up. We got ourselves into this situation, and it will take a community effort to etract ourselves from this mountain of debt and trade imbalance. The answer is not confrontation and protectionist policies. The answer lies in cooperation between China-US-UK-Euro to fix what has gone so wrong.

The coupling of the financial collapse with China’s lock-up period expiring on many foreign banks’ share purchase of domestic Chinese banks may prove to be the “linch-pin” that brings this cliche house of cards crumbling to the floor. In recent weeks, the Royal Bank of Scotland has opted to sell it’s 4.3% stake in Bank of China for a cool $2.4 billion, profiting nearly $800 million. At the same time, Li Kashing unloaded $500 million in BOC shares, and UBS an additional $800+ million.

The question  is, as business owner and manager in China, “are these simply cash flow moves, or do these bank ‘insiders’ have access to information that the rest of us cannot get our hands on, or are simply too caught up in the China bubble to believe that these banks have a foundation in the swamps of Pudong?”

Varying opnions exist, but there are strong signs that the banks are nothing short of becoming insolvent in the next 12 to 18 months should the Chinese economy faulter and fall below 7.5% GDP growth (2009 est. 9%). Don’t forget who these banks open their biggest lines of credit with, SOE manufactures. These companies are shutting their doors on a daily basis throughout the south and across the northeast due to the glut of orders being placed. These same SOEs are culprits behind the Chinese banking crisises of the past decade, and I believe will be the dagger that will once again bring down the mighty Big Four.

Welcome to the brave new world of Chinese banking.