lt cap,

This is a generally tangential reply to your Alibaba question - don't know a thing about their prospects in particular. Jim Rogers has been ridiculed on the board before, as an eccentric loon. I personally like the guy, and admire his foresightedness - ahead of the curve.

In the 1980's he pounded the table to invest in China, when no one had that on their radar. He believed that so much that he moved to Singapor, where his daughters would be schooled in Mandarin. Because he believed that no matter what happened to China - economic upheaval, civil war, whatever - that China would become the world's economic superpower. One factor (among many) is that their work ethic makes them far more productive than American workers, who feel a great sense of entitlement. And I suppose all the other reasons why when the Chinese market retreats, or growth is rolled back from 9% to 7%, the world markets tremble. Obviously, the ability to build a middle class and increase wealth and demand for goods (e..g., Alibaba), internal and external demands, etc. supports this thesis.

And the 'big one' - I think - will be this: inevitably, the world's reserve currency will change at some point from the dollar to ....hard to say - the Yuan maybe, or maybe a basket of currencies. But when everything on earth is no longer bought and sold in dollars changes, the biggest beneficiary will likely be China. In the early 1900's the British pound was the world's reserve currency. That got change, also. The results are obvious - British is no longer much an economic nor military power. Their wars would likely be a lot shorter than our wars, given that they'd probably get whacked within days without our support. Well....unless they were fighting the French aka 'Surrender Monkeys :-)

The one thing that Roger's couldn't have predicted - AI's ability to make workers irrelevant, which also makes most  all workers all over the world equally useless - Foxconn says it has already replaced 60,000 workers with computers/industrial machines/AI devices. An 'unemployable' class, whether it's here or there equalizes their worth, I think.