The piece below was taken from Transport Trackers, a boutique transport research firm started by ex-Citi Asia transport head Charles de Trenck in Hong Kong. We've included only excerpts and brief summary comments, the full piece can be found at their site.

TT:

Container veteran Niels K Balling contributed this think piece on Intra‐Asia containers... Mr Balling notes, in passing, that the intra‐Asia market is so big and complex that trying to boil it down in this fashion perhaps does not do it justice, so he apologizes in advance.

Intra-Asia container trade has become the largest region for world trade.

Yes, China has delivered the world's most spectacular economic growth story in history.

And whatever your political beliefs, the Chinese have lifted millions out of poverty, more than any aid organization in such a short period of time. China also remains a fascinating nation with one of the richest cultural heritages in the world.

Yet the government has massively distorted the nation's economic system over the last few decades, leading to fourteen dangerous Chinese excesses, each of which is only sustainable by inflating the others!

Watch how each domino falls into the next one.

China's Fourteen Dominoes of Destruction >>>

Maybe save this for the weekend when you have more time.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/youngchina/

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The best bull argument I can find in regards to the Chinese market is that the government has little choice but to keep liquidity flowing, even if they know this is will be negative in the long-term. 

Since a government "investigation" can't possibly yield much, and since they're saying flat-out that lending won't be capped, this sounds incredibly bullish. China isn't going to take away the punchbown -- as we've noted, they just can't. When even the slightest hint of lending curbs recently brought up, the market tanked nearly 7%. Imagine if the threats were real. The bubble must roll on.

The government may fear the potential repercussions of deflating asset prices in the short term so much that they are willing to ignore the longer term consequences of fueling asset prices further. Fair enough, sounds like standard human nature when it comes to politics and just today Chinese officials have said they will investigate price gains but won't cap new lending. Thus if you openly regard this as a punt on the government's actions, fair enough we can't argue that. But...