The overwhelming winner was this graphic so that is what it will be.
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Yesterday I mentioned that I thought the CCP, at all levels, was running out of resources. I start poking around today when what do I see?
1. "Recently, various local authorities have resorted to imposing fines as a means of raising revenue."
2. "Several major national and regional state-owned banks have announced restrictions on withdrawal limits for depositors." The daily transfer limits, in dollars, range widely from a cumulative maximum low of $694. FWIW - In many videos about money matters in China there are background clips of people or machines counting massive stacks of 100 Yuan notes. This is because they are a very photogenic bright red. 100 Yuan is worth about $13.50. Think of them as a ten-spot.
3. "Merchant sailors engaged in international maritime transport revealed to media in May of this year that they have recently faced the most stringent enforcement by Shanghai Maritime Safety Administration. Numerous ships have been fined and some have been seized. For example, a bulk cargo vessel was fined 50,000Y (~$6,918US) simply because an Indonesian crew member hoisted a PRC flag upside down. This so-called enforcement is breeding more sever corruption."
4. "Another netizen reveals that the Maritime Safety Administration allows local units to raise funds. In one province the maritime administration demanded 2,000,000Y (~$276,484US) from each port, threatening to conduct daily inspections of ships in the harbor otherwise. Domestic Trade Ports couldn't afford this so they were subjected to constant harassment."
Almost all of the rest of the China news seems to be about the impending collapse of the PRC Real Estate Sector.
Taken separately they are anecdotal. Taken together they begin to paint a picture of impending disaster for the CCP and the PRC. How many dots do you have to connect before even the dullest can see what is coming?
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)
Excerpt from Tucker's interview with Colonel Douglas Macgregor.
"I think all of the lies that have been told for more than a year and half about the 'Ukrainians are winning'; 'the Ukrainian cause is just'; 'the Russians are evil'; 'the Russians are incompetent'.....all of that is collapsing. And it's collapsing because what's happening on the battlefield is horrific.
Ukrainians now, we think, have lost now 400,000 men killed in battle. We were talking about 300,000 - 350,000 a few months ago. Within the last month of this supposed counter-offensive which was to sweep the battlefield, they lost at least 40,000 killed. We don't even know how many people have been wounded but we know that probably upwards of 40-50 thousand soldiers are amputees.
We know the hospitals are full, and we know that Ukrainian units at the platoon and company level, that's worth anywhere from 50, to 150 to 200 men,are in piecemeal fashion, surrendering to the Russians. Not because they don't want to fight, it's because they can't fight anymore. They have so many wounded, they can't evacuate them, and commanders are saying, "Well if I can't evacuate my wounded, I'm going to surrender because otherwise the wounded will die."
And so they call the Russians, they all speak Russian, and tell them on the radio, "Look, I've got 50- 60 wounded here. I'm going to surrender because I don't want them to be killed, and the Russians, from the very beginning, have always treated the Ukrainians very fairly, and very gently. So they know they're not going to be abused or mistreated. They know they can actually be exchanged for Russian prisoners in the future, so they're surrendering. And I think we're going to see this army, that we've been spending on so heavily, increasingly melt away."
Very cogent analysis. Makes perfect sense.
A hypothetical just came to me. Being only a hypothetical, I ask for everyone’s patience with my presentation of it. Perhaps the impending disaster you outline would be sufficient to drive the Sino leadership to go outside the boundaries of China itself on a type of “mission of conquest”, so as to take for themselves whatever resources they encounter.
I’m recalling to mind something often cited by much of the evangelical community. They speak of a 200 million man army, and the Tigris and Euphrates being dried up somehow to facilitate the “way for the kings of the east”. Again, just a hypothetical. But it seems that these days, nothing — no matter how bizarre it might appaer — is really “off the table”.
China’s problems just keep getting worse:
YMBI:
The China Paper Dragon Is Dying – But Still Dangerous
Excerpt:
.....This week newspapers and the internet finally exploded with headlines like: “China Enters the Doom Loop,” “Default of State-Backed Developer Sino-Ocean Signals China’s Economic Crisis,” and “Why is China not rushing to fix its ailing economy?”
The sudden frenzy is exemplified by The Epoch Times publishing China’s July statistics, showing that their economy is collapsing years ahead of my optimistic estimate. Epoch Times journalist Terri Wu wrote: “The world’s second-largest economy has been struggling for months, failing to achieve the post-pandemic boom that many had anticipated. The latest July data release showed exports posting its sharpest year-on-year drop since before the pandemic, and imports at five straight months of decline. Factory-gate prices fell for the 10th consecutive month, while new home sales saw its most significant monthly drop since July 2022,” adding, “China has slid into deflation after months of disappointing exports, manufacturing, home sales, and youth employment results.”
That’s it in a nutshell. Now let’s look at the details.
.....China’s factories are in trouble because they are bloated by government subsidies and cheap money from the central bank. For example, London’s Financial Times analysts report that Chinese automakers now produce 40 million cars per year, but the Chinese buy only 20 million. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is dampening car production by canceling production licenses. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Europe are spending billions on car production and electric vehicles that will soon be competing with heavily discounted Chinese cars and EV’s. What will happen to stocks like BMW, Toyota and Ford? And how about Tesla?
A chart comparing today’s Chinese exports to the level of exports a year ago is instructive.
Chart is at linked article
Today’s China is only able to sell ships, refined petroleum products, medicines, and rare earth minerals. Sales of those products will ultimately dry up too.
These charts show that not only are foreigners not buying, neither are the Chinese. Manufacturing is more than 25% of China’s economy and it has steadily fallen last quarter — dragging down overall GDP growth to 0.8%. Gone forever are GDP growth rates of five and 10 percent The Chinese economy has now entered a deflationary spiral – the economic nation-killer feared by all central banks.
.....Can the CCP fix its economic crisis? Christopher Balding, an expert on China in the Henry Jackson Society, believes that not even the entire international financial community, including private investors, could bail out the CCP even if they wanted to do so. He said, “The very simple reason is that nobody in the world has the amount of capital that Beijing needs.” That amount of capital exceeds ten trillion dollars, a number that signals the beginning of the end for the CCP and their debt-fueled economy. The CCP’s own chart below confirms that foreign investors are stampeding out the door.
Chart at linked article
With regard to China’s population crisis, the respected American demographer, Peter Zeihan, redid his graph for China. The result was worse than he had originally thought. Much worse. In drawing the new chart he used the latest official Beijing numbers plus other statistics and internal extrapolations.
Chart at linked article
.....Demographers estimate the total population of China to be 770 million by the year 2100, a figure that does not include possible famines, civil strife, and warfare.
The CCP knows all this and is trying to solve the problem with programs that include money for sperm donors and allow unmarried couples to have a family with all the benefits reserved for married couples. The CCP also moved from a one-child policy to a two-child policy, then to a three-child policy, and finally abolishing all restrictions. Russia tried a similar “money for babies” program that failed completely. It is all too little too late for China, and no program can change their grim destiny.
The unspoken social contract between the CCP and the Chinese people is based on the government providing international and domestic security plus an ever-rising standard of living. The Chinese people’s part of that contract means living under an oppressive surveillance dictatorship. However, the collapsing economy will soon make it impossible for the CCP to deliver its part of the social contract. So in order to maintain its control the CCP diverts its people’s attention from a lower standard of living by blaming it all on America, the nation the CCP has promised to dominate and destroy with its 1999 published declaration of “unrestricted warfare.”
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IMO China’s demographic implosion is much worse than even this author believes. I think that by 2050 China’s population will be around 700 million.
NOTE: Multiple charts referenced are at linked article.