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Don’t Say, You Were Never Warned [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-13
By David Glenn Cox
The problem, he said, was Joe Biden gets no respect. Immediately criticized and lambasted by the Reich wing media no matter what he says or does. Discounted on the left. Wrapped up in their own personal causes and petty grievances, they choose not to listen or pay attention when Joe tries telling them something important.
Just the other day Joe Biden mentioned, “China was a ticking time bomb.”
Reuters proclaims, “Biden misstates China’s GDP growth!” The Economist says, “Joe Biden’s China strategy is not working.” CNBC, “ Tech investors face New Era of China restrictions after Biden orders limits funding A.I. chips.”
Joe Biden was trying to say to them (the media) and us (the public) something. And all the media can do is to say, “You’re wrong! You’re so wrong! I read in Forbes magazine China’s GDP was twice that amount!” Who do you suppose gets better intelligence reports on the true state of the Chinese economy? Can any strategy work when one partner doesn’t like the strategy?
Joe Biden is absolutely 100% correct about China. China is in trouble and is a ticking time bomb.
In the wake of China’s Covid-19 protocols. Manufacturers in China preferred the Republican approach of keeping that factory humping and keeping those Ping Pong balls coming. And if you lose a few folks in the process, well the world still needs Ping Pong balls too, you know!
So many manufacturers packed their bags left China. On top of that the CCP passed a new espionage law. Basically, anything we say is espionage is now espionage. “Maybe someday, we’ll put you in jail. You never know, do you?” One of those laws that even if never used is always still there to remind you to think before you speak.
China sort of got a bit of the big head and still being new to the Capitalism thing thought they could do whatever they wanted. That new openness started to wear off and reveal that same old iron fist. And one by one, manufacturers began to leave China. “We don’t have to put up with that kind of shit! You’re not the only third world labor market around here, you know!”
And from there it begins rolling downhill eviscerating the economy as it rolls. From the beginning it was Growth Uber Alles. Money brings growth and growth brings money. So, sitting money was bad money. Local governments were encouraged to spend, spend, spend! The good times were here, and they will be with us forever! Now, if you were a middle-management Party member trying to get noticed by the big shots in Beijing, which is better?
A fabulous new train station admired by one and all. Or maybe a new underground sewer system out of sight under the town buried and unadmired. In Chinese construction, customers begin paying for their apartment as soon as they sign the papers. The property developer gets most of his profits when the building is erected but is not yet complete. Under Growth Uber Alles, the developer takes his profits and starts another project. Abandoning the previous development as milked of 90% of its profits.
A sizable part of these sales are to investors anxious and quick to get in on the ground floor. Everybody is going to get rich; you know!
Then manufacturers began to move out and then the layoffs began. Then sales of luxury apartments began to slide because everybody has left town, and no one can afford those apartments anymore. Then the little shops began to close and the restaurants. China is in a hell of recession near a depression as Real Estate is in free fall.
Like 2008 here, only worse. The bubble has burst and whatever China’s GDP was last year, has no bearing on this year. That was in the distant past, and we are in the new times. China has been limiting depositors withdrawals, thus encouraging the populace to avoid banks. To take your money out of that bank and never ever put any back in. So, factor in a banking crisis as well.
This is a new experience for China, as the economy has always gone up and up. A generation has grown up fat with the new prosperity and now, it’s all gone. With dreams of becoming rich themselves and now those dreams are all gone too. The government doesn’t know what to do or how to fix this and is a major part of the problem. Why build your factory in China where they steal from you and extort bribes. Why not Vietnam or Thailand, where they don’t?
Theft of technology is big business and Joe’s Biden’s chip restriction is just the right medicine. China is hurting as the world’s cell phone factory. You wanna steal? Then no more chips for you.
China was recently hit by a Typhoon, and the flooding around Beijing in the new train station was horrendous and made worse because it didn’t have that new sewer system under it. Foreigners are leaving and taking their new technologies with them. Western car dealerships are shutting down as the bloom is off the rose.
“That’s not good because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things,” – Joe Biden
Presidents speak in President speak. Joe’s not going to come right out and splain it to you Lucy. This is as clear as it gets.
Means there could be trouble in the offing. China’s pronounced arm twisting over the South China Sea and military provocations against Taiwan. Nothing takes the public’s mind off their domestic troubles quite like a war. Send the Navy out to cause trouble and put it on the six o’clock news.
Chinese exports to the United States and the EU are down dramatically, and China’s only upwardly mobile customer is Russia. And Russia has no money, but lots of oil. Only with the economy on the dips they don’t need as much of that oil.
China isn’t important to most Americans because it isn’t inside the United States. Mark Twain said, “God invented war to teach Americans geography.” China is the second largest economy on the planet and is in big trouble. “China was a ticking time bomb.”
Social discontent is rising, and local governments are becoming more punitive. Using arbitrary fines to replace lost tax revenues. Record floods and Typhoons, Hurricane Katrina times one hundred or times a thousand. Mass devastation and unresponsive government (You’re doing a heck of a job there Brownie.)
This is a nuclear power under a great political and social strain of a type that no economist in China has ever dealt with before. With an autocratic government whose first response is to go full North Korea and lie and be evasive and clamp down. They spent every yuan and saved nothing for a rainy day. Palaces and parks but few sewer systems. And a hard rain could fall someday. Never say Joe Biden didn’t try to warn you.
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