Declining U.S. consumer sentiment has led to this year's closure of 10, 000 factories in China's export powerhouse, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province.

FORBES: Beijing Bust?

Macau sits on a horn of rocky coastline, where the Pearl River washes into the South China Sea.

NEWYORKER: The God of Gamblers

Positioned at Pudong's tip, the Oriental Pearl Tower was a cartoonish totem for China's race into modernity and an emphatic counterpoint to the Bund, a strip of colonial-era buildings on the opposite Puxi bank of the Huangpu River.

WSJ: Shanghai's Pudong District Goes From Soulless to Sizzling

They will be further stretched as trade booms up the Pearl River Delta, which reaches deep into China, as far as Guangzhou.

ECONOMIST: Ports in a storm

The flow from the source of the Pearl River, which empties into the South China Sea near Hong Kong and Macau, has been reduced to a trickle from a waterfall.

FORBES: Magazine Article

If we are looking for plausible causes of combat between China and America, they are not to be found in future Pearl Harbors that is, in head on collisions of national interest.

FORBES: Is China the Enemy?