Beijing wanted to cool its housing market, but created a bigger problem, as the fallout from debt-laden developers and sinking sales spreads to the broader economy.
A model Chinese property developer in a sector replete with risk takers is teetering on the edge of default. Short of cash, one of China’s biggest asset managers has missed payments to investors. And billions of dollars have flowed out of the country’s stock markets.
In China, August has been a dizzying ride.
What started three years ago as a crackdown on risky business behavior by home builders, and then an ensuing housing slowdown, has spiraled rapidly this month. The broader economy has been threatened, and the confidence of consumers, businesses and investors undermined. So far, China’s typically hands-on policymakers have done little to ease anxieties and seem determined to reduce the country’s economic reliance on real estate.
This is many decades in the making. From useless infrastructure projects, to artificially deflating the yuan, to rampant IP theft, to making CEOs disappear, to destroying the entire IT sector, to fake economic figures, to crazy regional incentive models, to major corruption, to very restrictive foreign capital rules, and one of the worst looming demographic crises in the entire world. They’re so racist and xenophobic they’ll never be able to plug the gap with immigration either. Xi is reversing decades of Deng’s economic reforms, and looks set to return China to Mao’s policies. We have history to inform us of the likely outcome.
The good news for the West is that they’ve done such a good job of building an insular economy that even if all exports to China stopped today, it would barely move the market. Further, if they have a recession or depression, it will cut energy and food prices for us, reducing inflationary pressures. China is not a good world citizen. They pose a material threat to Taiwan, Tibet, millions of Uyghur muslims, and their neighbours. They champion authoritarianism, corruption, violence, and torture as means for power. I will not cry when they are weakened.
I agree on all points. Hopefully this government collapses so a Chinese democracy can rise, or at the very least, we don’t repeat the 20th century mistake of exporting all manufacturing to a fascist country for cheap labor.
Whew, that was a whole lot at once. And like, I get the gist of this but not the impact. Once a certain (very low) bar has been reached, countries are remarkably stable things. Worse disasters have befallen other nations that ended up surviving intact. You have to be super unhappy to want to rock the boat that much. China’s one of the biggest, richest countries in the world. It’ll get bounced around by headwinds but I doubt we’re going to see some crazy democratic revolution - that’s kind of a Western dream, if I could be so bold as to say so.
At the absolute most, I can see Xi and Xi supporters being tossed out via party mechanisms and a new guy taking over. Make a few minor corrections, maybe one big, but a natural equilibrium will return pretty quickly.
Yeah, the Chinese are not exactly unhappy with their leadership. They all profited from the economic rise of the nation. It will take years of economic strain to push people to a revolution.
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