China is following the liberal strategy of building infrastructure. Build as much infrastructure as possible before the decline and you’ll at least have the infrastructure built when it happens.
When a junkie can’t afford a fix what do they do?
Their decline is going viral.
As it should.
Paybacks for Wuhan.
Xi spent $billions on building a new state of the art mega city - that hardly anyone has moved into.
If you’re interested in what’s going on in China, google “Lie flat” or “Let it rot”. It’s FASCINATING. Here’s the Reader’s Digest version.
As a young man, you can’t get married until you buy an apartment. (These apartments are completely unfinished shells, basically just a concrete square with plumbing hookups.) It has to be bare because it must be built for YOUR PERSONAL fung shui. (Yes I’m serious). If you don’t own an apartment, no woman will marry you.
And with all the speculation in apartment buildings that happened, the pricing of apartments is now out of reach for guys. They’re staring at their income and realizing that there’s no way they’ll ever make enough money to pay for one. So this means there’s no chance they can get married. So, no kids, no real future. WHY WORK? So bunches and bunches of them have given up. They lie around all day playing games on their phones. (with their parents I assume, I’ve never seen that addressed). But they’re facing a generation that has given up.
Oh! And another fact. During the “1 child per couple” days . In Chinese culture it’s normally the oldest son who takes care of the parents when they retire. If you’re only allowed 1 child, you want that child to be a son. So, lots of girl babies given away, or aborted. They did this for over a decade. I’m sure you see the problem. All these guys are now marrying age, and the M:F ratio is HORRIBLY skewed. Meaning the women can be ultra choosey of who they marry. So now not only do you have to have an apartment, you have to have a REALLY NICE apartment, and lots of money.
Which the young guys can never earn.
Gonna be interesting to watch! I hope that the CHICOMs don’t get desperate enough to stay in power that they start a losing war just to thin out the herd so to speak.
You would hope fiscal decline might stop their military belligerence, but North Korea has not been deterred. Darn.
Given China’s and Russia’s financial strains, they may well accept President Trump’s proposal for all 3 of America, Russia and China to cut Defense spending by 50% over the course of 5 years. They could use the cash savings as much as we could.
Communism never works, but the market reforms of his predecessor spooked Xi so he veered into fascism. Perfect system if you’re a belligerant. Won’t save china’s economy tho’.
And yet our industries continue to use their resources.
‘Free traders’ be damned.
With the,economic decline will come civil unrest followed by a war against a foreign adversary.