Andrea Mandel-Campbell in MacLeans;
Andy Xie, chief Asia economist with U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley, points to the US$350 billion in speculative “hot money” that has poured into China in recent years on the expectation that its currency, the renminbi (or yuan), would appreciate. Much of that money has been parked in real estate as the recently privatized housing market goes through an unprecedented boom. In Shanghai, prices skyrocketed by 28 per cent last year, with sleek condo towers, office high-rises, hotels and malls being thrown up at a breakneck pace. The vacancy rate officially stands at 2.7 per cent, but anecdotal evidence suggests up to 40 per cent of the new space sits empty.
[…]
And the problems, like everything in China, are mind-bogglingly huge. At their heart is a dysfunctional, corrupt and virtually bankrupt financial system. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates the country’s banks have racked up as much as US$800 billion in bad loans, mostly doled out to weak state-owned enterprises that churn out cheap, inferior products in a thinly veiled effort to keep millions employed in the absence of a social safety net.
Lots, lots, lots more.
h/t China E-Lobby
If China collapses, will Wal-mart be far behind? Seriously. Just try buying something there that doesn’t have MADE IN CHINA stamped somewhere on it.
One of the ‘advantages’ of a society where a central committee controls virtually every aspect of a person’s life, is that major changes can be made very quickly. (Whether or not those changes are actually beneficial to the society, is another matter entirely). I still like to think that one of the oldest cultures on this earth, must have learned something in order to survive this long. The Chinese bureaucracy is focussed on very long-term goals, ( as oppossed to-let’s say- a bureaucracy that hasn’t a clue what it is doing NOW- let alone decades in the future). With a general attitude that sez: “Not our problem- we will not be in power when the results of what we are now doing will become evident.” Personally, I am more concerned with what is going to happen in THIS country, rather than China- or anywhere else.
“If China collapses, will Wal-mart be far behind? Seriously. Just try buying something there that doesn’t have MADE IN CHINA stamped somewhere on it.”
Just try buying something ANYWHERE that doesn’t have MADE IN CHINA stamped somewhere on it.
When a country gets most cylinders working and begins to cook, they can be tempted to start grabbing more than they need.
Our unmotitivated spirit will come alive when Americans, US and Canadian both become aware of how China is moving quietly but ruthlessly to control key economic / industrial levers of power.
China knows we are fully distracted with the Jihadist threat and the corruption and fraud of our Liberal government.
Could they wish for any more opportune time to effect industrial mergers and gain results of millions worth of R&D at no cost? Knowledge is power and they are getting it big time.
Google searches of China+merger, China+Canada or other China+* combinations you can think of will yield surprising results.
These are times when the US and Canada should be focused and alert.
The people of China are generally very good folks but the over ambitious leadership is making me very nervous. 73s TonyGuitar [BendGovt.blog.ca]
Ah, yes. Just as the Soviet Union and East Germany, China, with its unsustainable system, will before long fall into ruination. This is frighteningly ominous. Once the Communist tyrants see the writing on the wall of their incipient demise, will they turn into a North Korea with the balls to make good on their threats and attempt to salvage themselves by emulating Hitler and his doomed campaign for world domination?
Eventually, humanity will come to see that communism and tyranny, as well as Islamofascist terrorism, are unworkable and must be permanently abandoned. The events leading to this widespread epiphany cannot positively be forcast, unfortunately, so with leftist appeasment as we have in much of the world today, it could be a long war, or worse, a very short one with a nuclear winter nightmare.
Could the worst be yet to come? Take off the rose-colored glasses.
BTW, the above was just a musing to no one in particular. Not to imply anyone around here is necessarily wearing silly tinted glasses. After all, it’s mostly leftists who gravitate towards wearing pretentious glasses, even sometimes those with 20/20 vision. Funny people, the left… 🙂
When I said 20/20 vision, I was referring to eyesight, not intellectual vision, wrt leftists. Naturally. 🙂
Don’t worry too much about China, Paul Martin is having 2 ships built there so he is doing his part to help out their economy buying them in part with the 161 million dollars Canadian taxpayers were kind enough to give to him whilst he was closing the Collingwood yards.
Oh and while they are experiencing 9% growth we give them foreign aid 50 million a year. It’s obvious that while our growth is half of theirs they need us to give them money for nothing. ANDREA MANDEL-CAMPBELL seems to have missed that.
If people stopped buying stuff Made in China they wouldn’t sell it. I take forever shopping in the hopes I will find something made anywhere but China.
Idle thought – wonder how much of our “beyond (Sheila Frasers) arms length” dollars available to the Libs is “invested” in China?
Stephen, The Chinese have character flaws like the rest of us but I don’t think impulse is one of them.
Unlike Hitler, they see that destroying your opponent is old fashioned and self defeating.
You can’t do much selling to a crippled non-working customer.
They also have enough polluted systems to clean up as it is without any moves towards a nuclear winter.
I agree with you that there are bumpy roads ahead for China but they will not be as black as you suggest.
With the stubborn old dogmatic leaders fading with age, we can expect new leaders to be more flexable and more positive.
No rosy glasses, just logic. Even Feisty North Korea has a pattern of talking after rattling nuclear swords for attention. Can we expect less from China? 73s TG
Funny, I always thought this site had a pink background, but just now I looked at it without my glasses on… and yet, now it’s back to pink again. Oh well.
Kate, if China’s economy collapses, it will take the North American economy down with it.
More ‘liberalized’ trade is not only the path to mutually stronger economies on both sides of the Pacific, but is the key to regime change in China.
If you subscribe to the dynastic cycle history of China, then China is due for a regime change and soon. The next dynasty in China will be an entrepreneurial one, if the Chinese ‘economic miracle’ can keep chugging along.
I want to make it very clear I don’t support the current regime in China, which is barbaric.
“The next dynasty in China will be an entrepreneurial one, if the Chinese ‘economic miracle’ can keep chugging along.”
Keep in mind, however: 1) that’s a big “if” and 2) “entrepreneurial” can also mean “expansionistic.” To elaborate on the first point, Chinese dynasties are often separated by periods of anarchy, despite the fact that, at the moment, the world appears to have largely forgotten the centripetal tendency that has always lurked right beneath the surface of every seemingly centralized Chinese state. And on the second, an openly capitalist and even democratic China would NOT necessarily be a friend to the West, nor necessarily less of the threat it currently poses to Taiwan. As they have abandoned Marxism, the CCP has used nationalism to maintain loyalty, and Chinese nationalism will outlive communism.