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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Drusus, post: 352599, member: 6370&quot;]If you have to go back to movable type to prove industrialization and modernization thats a big step. China is a balance of official soviet style communist and emerging free market. And yes, they are a nation emerging both in social modernization and industrial. As you have said yourself, a large amount of china is still living a basic agrarian lifestyle but in the larger population centers and certain cities the markets are relatively free and modern, some would say too free. </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>It has not been very long since they have started a real push to modernize and along the way they have been forced to accept (however slowly) the consequences of competing in a world market, this means heavy pressure to continue to give way to more free market systems and rights. We seem okay as long as we can still tap a cheap labor market.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>but the issue is counterfeits and certainly the british pounds that were counterfeited, if not detected could be worth twice as much as a US dollar and be used anywhere they take a pound coin. in fact I just read this report which was interesting about the problem of counterfeiting in the so called free world:</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i>During July 2003 a Treasury representative stated in a Parliamentary answer that analysis on a sample of one pound coins collected in late 2002, showed that approximately one percent were counterfeit. With the Royal Mint estimate of some 1410 million pound coins in circulation (2003–2004), it follows that approximately 14 million were counterfeit. There are two main types of one-pound counterfeits in circulation within the UK: the first comprise cast lead or tin based ‘coins’ coated with brass; the second are struck brass ‘coins’. The lead or tin variety can vary in quality but wear rapidly usually look, feel and sound completely wrong and are eventually identified by the banks and Post Office where they are withdrawn from circulation. Therefore the vast majority of counterfeit £1.00 coins currently in circulation are of the struck brass (or nickel–brass) form. Of these some will also be easy to detect if made of the wrong metal or details of the design look too crude and coarse. However, there is a particular struck counterfeit in circulation where the quality is such that bank sorting machines and tellers cannot identify these pieces. Both cast and struck counterfeit coinage is reviewed, along with a case study analysis of each method, attention being focused on the high quality struck nickel–brass copy. </i></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Its all over the world is all I wanted to point out, not debate the nature of the Chinese government. Who knows what nations are faking US coins these days, and the new Euros are highly faked coins. It does take THAT much money to cast and then mint a coin if one can expect millions in return. Most Chinese are just ordinary law abiding citizens, these counterfeiters are, most likely, organized crime which is a still a problem everywhere.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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