Jim Rodgers' "A Bull in China"

A%20Bull%20in%20China.jpgExcerpts from a recent Forbes.com interview with Jim Rogers, co-founder of the Quantum Fund and one of the most successful Global Macro investors in history. He tells Forbes.com why he's so bullish on China, sour on America and will raise his family in Singapore.

So, why China?

A big change is taking place. Most people do not understand the full breadth and depth of what's happening there. All Americans are spending a lot of money in China now, so why don't we get something back? They're among the best capitalists in the world. Massachusetts is more communist than China is these days. You can benefit too; you don't have to sit back and moan and say, "What do we do?" Investing in the U.S. in 1907 was a brilliant thing to do. Investing in China in 2007 is a brilliant thing to do. Just call your broker. It's that easy.

How are you preparing for Chinese dominance in the next century?

My daughter is 4-and-a-half. She has two native languages. One is Mandarin. When she was born, we got a Chinese nanny from China who moved in with us, and I told her you only speak Mandarin to her. She speaks Chinese like a native. We've moved to Singapore to insure that it continues. We're having another daughter in March, and she'll be brought up the same way. There are 1.5 billion people who speak Chinese every day. That most Americans are monolingual I see as a bad situation.

You've no doubt been told you're being alarmist and that despite China's rapid growth it's a small part of the world economy.

Nobody quite understood in 1907 that the U.S. was the next great country in the world. The U.S. was a debtor nation, we were lawless, we had a huge Civil War and presidents were assassinated. We didn't have human rights. We had massacres, people would demonstrate and they would call the army and the Pinkertons. As recently as 1945, the British still thought they were the greatest country in the world and they could prevent America from growing.