(DTN) For American farmers, China used to represent the difference between $5 soybeans and $10 soybeans. Today the Middle Kingdom is even more important. Half of the soybeans America grows are exported and half of the exports go to China -- and beans are in the teens.

With so many soybeans in the same basket, growers may well wonder about China's continued ability to import. What are the odds something will go wrong?

Some smart people -- among them, analysts at Stratfor.com and Wall Street short seller Jim Chanos -- think China's economy is headed for a crash. These China bears are in the minority, to be sure, and the bulls' lineup also includes smart people, like Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs. Still, when a single customer accounts for a quarter of your output, you naturally want to hear the naysayers out.

The bears' case boils down to two related concerns, one financial, the other structural.

When an economy's output is growing 10 percent a year, as China's is, money supply should be growing at roughly the same rate. China's money supply is expanding at almost twice that rate. Bank lending is booming. Consumer prices, especially food prices, are rising uncomfortably.

In aerial photos, China's cities resemble forests of construction cranes. Ever wonder how many of those buildings make economic sense? Chanos talks of China's "very major property bubble." When the bubble pops -- the bears are sure it will -- the underlying bank loans will sour and the economy swoon.

Chinese officials call those worries exaggerated but concede the economy needs restraining and the inflation rate taming. They've been raising bank reserve requirements and interest rates and allowing the currency to strengthen and issuing assurances that they have the problem under control. So far, though, the boom keeps booming.

Investment in fixed assets, like property, is running at 70 percent of gross domestic product, Chanos says, whereas at the peak of the real-estate bubble in the U.S. and the UK in 2006 and 2007, investment in fixed assets was less than 20 percent. Other estimates of Chinese investment are closer to 40 percent than 70 percent, but even at 40 percent the Chinese economy looks structurally unbalanced.

Like other East Asian economies before it, China has relied for its rapid growth on exports and investment. Consumption, the big source of economic demand in the U.S. and other Western economies, has lagged.

Stratfor.com's analysts see this as a natural outgrowth of Asian countries' large populations. Governments worry first about unemployment and social unrest; they thus value production more than consumption. They adopt policies that force workers to save so their savings can be channeled into investments and still more employment.

Eventually, though, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea rebalanced to become more reliant on consumption. China hasn't yet been able to do that. It's vulnerable to a collapse of exports or investments, and investments look vulnerable.

That's the bear case: Owing to financial and structural imbalances, China's economy is on the precipice and it won't take much to knock it off.

Against that a number of things can be said.

-- Double-digit money-supply growth isn't as significant in an economy with a high savings rate and an underdeveloped financial system.

-- To buy property, Chinese are required to make down payments of from 30 percent to 50 percent. It isn't all speculation.

-- An authoritarian government has tools to manage the economy that policymakers in democracies lack, not to mention nearly $3 trillion in foreign-currency reserves.

-- A crash wouldn't necessarily be the end of the China story. "Any slowdown would be temporary and a buying opportunity," writes Standard Chartered Bank's chief economist, Gerard Lyons, in the Financial Times. "It would highlight that the business cycle exists in China, and that while the trend is up, one should expect setbacks along the way."

Perhaps the most pertinent point is that economic imbalances can persist longer than economists think possible. As early as the mid-1990s, some analysts were pointing to the Chinese economy's poorly run banking system and misallocation of capital and warning that it could all come to grief.

Closer to home, some analysts have been saying for decades that the U.S. couldn't continue to run massive foreign-trade deficits. It's unsustainable. Well, just because something isn't sustainable doesn't mean it will collapse any time soon. The world isn't that uncomplicated.

The final point may be the one most consoling to soybean growers. If it's true that what most concerns the leadership in Beijing is social unrest and instability, you have to think the government will use some of those trillions in foreign-exchange reserves to buy food and the makings of food rather than let people starve.

Relying heavily on a single customer is never comfortable, but even if the bears are right about China, it doesn't necessarily mean the soybean-export story will end.

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