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A "Broken China" ping.

If you want on or off the ping list send me a FReepMail.

The bad news for the CCP and the PRC doesn't let up.

1. The floods in Hebei province, around Beijing, have inundated the PLA garrison, the 82^nd Army, evidently with large loss of life. Even WeChat isn't significantly censoring the news. This explains the unusual absence of high CCP officials expressing sympathy for the people of Hebei. It's because too many soldiers were drowned , which made national leaders afraid of the military unit staging protests or a revolt. What seems to be underlining the accuracy of the reports is the lack of CCP-trolls criticizing the online posts reporting the deaths.
I will be keeping an eye out for more on this.

2. There is a large amount of commercial and government debt that is coming due in the next 6 months. Right before a tsunami hits there is a drawback of water. We are seeing ordinary people trying to get as much of their money out of PRC banks. This is the start of the drawback. The next step is small creditors trying to collect and not supplying any more goods without payment up front. It is conservatively estimated that Country Garden alone owes suppliers about $390B US. Country Garden is also holding back construction workers wages. Both of these steps only serve to hasten the arrival of the tsunami and push the crest higher. There are about $50B dollars in dollar denominated debt coming due in the next 4 months. This is in addition to the Yuan debt I mentioned above.

3. Chinese netizens have been rushing to purchase radiation monitors after the news broke of Japan's planned release to treated water from the Fukushima reactor. They are discovering that the highest radiation readings are INSIDE their homes. One netizen reported finding in their home, radiation levels ~900 times the level in Tokyo. One person I saw was getting, per day, the radiation dose an aircrew flying the NY/Tokyo polar route would get in a year, about 9 millisieverts.
This is NOT helping the PRC's housing crisis. Again I will be following this one.

3. Apple is expediting its exit from the PRC, mostly to Vietnam and India. Expect the Apple iPhone 15 to be the first iPhone to ship directly from India.

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)

I wonder how many other times China has underreported casualties from events like flooding, crop failures, or the tight Covid lockdowns? I suspect they do this quite often since Chinese sized disasters would by extremely embarrassing to Xi and the CCP.

Thank you for these well-reasoned analyses of the situation in China. If not for you, most of us would have no knowledge of what’s going on in there. Very tough break for the Chinese people as a whole.

Thanks L.P.!

Radiation levels in homes, I assume this is apartment homes. I wonder if the CCP run Steel companies incorporated things like degraded steel from old nuclear containment vessels and piping in making their structural steel? Might account for it. I suppose that it could also be something like radioactive mining tailings that were used in the aggregate for concrete.