The latest big thing for young singles in the PRC is sharing a bed with strangers as a cost savings measure. This is a sleeping arrangement only. The phrase used in on-line ads translates to English as, "One room, One bed, two covers."
Disposable Income is defined as income minus taxes plus transfer payments. This is income available for both necessities (food, housing, clothing) and desires (cats, internet, etc.). Cats have different priorities.
Annual Medium Disposable Income in the PRC is 31,370 Yuan or about $4,860. Half the population is above that and half below. Annual MDI in the US is ~$15,000. About half the PRC population lives on ~$390.00 per month.
There are new reports from the PRC housing sector than indicate things are worse than I thought. Mind you, the data represented here is from BEFORE the latest flooding damage.
The two largest real estate developers reported huge losses. The largest "Country Garden" reported a loss for the first half of 2023 of 55 billion Yuan or ~$7.63B. Moodys dropped Country Garden's credit rating 3 places from B1 (junk) to CA1 (junkier).
The CEO of Country Garden, Yang Huiyan, Asia's richest woman, has seen her net worth drop by 84% from ~$33.2B to ~$5.3B.
The troubles for the PRC's second largest developer, EverGrande, reported losses of ~52.7 billion Yuan or ~$7.28B.
While we have safeguards to prevent this, consider what would be happening in the US if our two largest real estate developers reported such losses. Now remember that real estate has roughly twice the share of the PRC economy as it does in ours.
These economic woes are only going to intensify the PRC demographic decline. The CCP is increasingly thought of as out of touch and corrupt. That is, corrupt by Chinese standards. This is enough to make the Biden's blush.
WWG1WGA
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)