The whole global system might look precarious. But in particular, the coming collapse of China’s bubble Ponzi-scheme economy continues to come. The South China Morning Post’s Jake Van Der Kamp cites ever-expanding steel production and predicts that when the crash happens it will take the Communist Party with it, leading to something along the lines of post-USSR Russia. Anne Stevenson-Yang, looking at the property market, foresees a sharp fall in the Yuan and eventual recovery on a more sustainable basis – including a happy ending for Vitasoy.
Unless the ‘Beijing model’ incorporates the economics equivalent of a miraculous perpetual-motion machine, the current cycle of pumped-up growth must end, and the transition must bring some degree of shock and pain. The Communist Party’s instinct for secrecy and tendency to panic can only make it worse. Soothsayers are playing a game of ‘chicken’ with fate. Gordon Chang was maybe 20 years too early. The analyst who holds out the longest before announcing that the meltdown is imminent will be the most lauded for prescience.
Meanwhile, we can wonder how far the Mainlandization of Hong Kong will have gone by the time China’s economic reckoning rudely interrupts. Will pre-emptive or retroactive ‘interpretations’ of the law have become so frequent that we will have forgotten what it was like when we knew what was legal and what wasn’t? Will a rubber-stamp Legislative Council have passed sweeping laws on subversion, treason and theft of state secrets that curb the press and the lawyers? Will we still have a press and lawyers?
Reasons to look forward to a crash (besides picking up Vitasoy shares).
As said previously, you have to wonder why everyone but everyone with a hint of testosterone or stockings (even for God’s sake wimps like Nury) have been sacked from the Post the last twenty years, why Jake hangs on. Could it be that he is deliberately harmless? He goes to some length in his article to point out that the Party will survive come what may. Good on yer Jake! You know how to lick red ass for sure.
Trying to count the number of cliches in your piece today. It’s easy. Just count the phrases!
Pip, pip!
I hear Jake is leaving the SCMP
Great insight by Anne. Here’s hoping…
George, I thought that you as an old-style Harold Wilson Socialist, loving rusty, money losing State-owned enterprises for all eternity and workers living in decrepit terraced houses with no plumbing, would love the Party until death do us part. If not, then what the eff do you want ?
@Joe Blow … You are assuming there’s anything remotely “socialist” about the CCP. If anything, the PRC’s an authoritarian, nationalistic right-wing capitalist kleptocracy (it ticks all the boxes).
Being on the left and despising the Party ain’t in itself an anomaly. Where you have a point though is that Georgie is a slavish acolyte of that superannuated leftie, John Pilger, an egregious apologist for the PRC.