Over the past five years, China’s household debt has surged by 50%, reaching an estimated total of US$11 trillion. This is largely attributed to a sustained housing boom, in which people have borrowed heavily to invest in multiple properties.
In response to the escalating debt crisis, the government has placed debt defaulters on a blacklist and face severe restrictions on their daily activities. Approximately 8.3 million people, representing about 1% of China’s working-age adults, find themselves on this list. In case of unpaid debts, authorities seize a person’s income to cover the liabilities, leaving them with a meager allowance to meet their daily expenses.
They are also barred from high-speed rail and air travel or participating in leisure activities such as vacations. while some are even banned from employment as civil servants.
Non-compliance with these restrictions can lead to detention by authorities.
Are billionaires as much of a problem in China as they are in the west?
I thought they already had way less, and the ones that do exist still have to bend over backwards to appease the CCP.
They are part of the CCP or at the very least extremely closely associated with it. Nobody becomes a billionaire in China without being part of the political caste - and the upper echelons of this political caste are very much a rich men’s club:
The problem is that the closer they are to the sun, the more likely it is for them to get burned. Get too far away though and you freeze to death. Xi likes his old-fashioned purges and it’s all too convenient to have political enemies disappeared for sins that everyone in the elite is guilty of, but only those who displease the God Emperor or might pose a perceived or real threat will ever be convicted of. And if that’s not enough, just make something up, because there is no independent judiciary and certainly no rule of law either. Xi’s rule even started with Cultural Revolution style public self-confessions of his enemies, except now they are on prime-time TV, even if the preceding torture is exactly the same and the scripts remain unchanged. They have become a staple of his rule, a regular feature of evening news, featuring an eclectic mix of business moguls, movie stars, politicians, journalists, influencers, etc.
Whether they’re subjects to the CCP or not, the money they’ve collected came from surplus Chinese workers created but did not receive. So yeah, it’s a symptom of underpaid labor.
Only 24% of US debt is held by foreigners and many more countries than the US are having debt in USD and have their currencies tied to it. That’s what “the world’s reserve currency” means. It’s absolutely massive, far too big to suddenly collapse. How and with what aim would international debtors suddenly demand payment? What kind of mechanism are you envisioning and why would these debtors do this in the first place? US debt is the most reliable in the world - everyone knows exactly what they are getting into.
The only realistic possibility is that the USD slowly loses relevance, similar to the British Pound - but this coincided with the decline of the British Empire and the dwindling importance of Britain in the world in general and in regards to trade in particular. America is still the only superpower for the foreseeable future (50+ years at the very least) and there is nobody else that might take the scepter, in regards to both soft and hard power. By that point, China (which is currently busy self-destroying its soft power with Xi’s moronic “wolf warrior diplomacy”, by the way) will have long imploded under the weight of its many unsolvable issues, chiefly among which the gigantic self-inflicted wound that is their demographic decline. The EU might be much stronger and more united at that point than it is now or it might not be, the Euro could be more important than it is now then or perhaps not. This largely depends on what’s going to happen to Eastern Europe.
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Thatcherism with Chinese characteristics.
Well, maybe plus a portion of George Orwell.
Thatcherism has always been Orwellian.
Or…introduce fair pay and abolish millionaires and especially billionaires…
Are billionaires as much of a problem in China as they are in the west? I thought they already had way less, and the ones that do exist still have to bend over backwards to appease the CCP.
They are part of the CCP or at the very least extremely closely associated with it. Nobody becomes a billionaire in China without being part of the political caste - and the upper echelons of this political caste are very much a rich men’s club:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/02/chinas-parliament-has-about-100-billionaires-according-to-data-from-the-hurun-report.html
The problem is that the closer they are to the sun, the more likely it is for them to get burned. Get too far away though and you freeze to death. Xi likes his old-fashioned purges and it’s all too convenient to have political enemies disappeared for sins that everyone in the elite is guilty of, but only those who displease the God Emperor or might pose a perceived or real threat will ever be convicted of. And if that’s not enough, just make something up, because there is no independent judiciary and certainly no rule of law either. Xi’s rule even started with Cultural Revolution style public self-confessions of his enemies, except now they are on prime-time TV, even if the preceding torture is exactly the same and the scripts remain unchanged. They have become a staple of his rule, a regular feature of evening news, featuring an eclectic mix of business moguls, movie stars, politicians, journalists, influencers, etc.
Whether they’re subjects to the CCP or not, the money they’ve collected came from surplus Chinese workers created but did not receive. So yeah, it’s a symptom of underpaid labor.
i am not surprised by this at all. in fact just today I was wondering what would happen to consumer debt if the USD collapsed.
How would the world’s reserve currency collapse?
Well for one thing if international debters demand payment.
Only 24% of US debt is held by foreigners and many more countries than the US are having debt in USD and have their currencies tied to it. That’s what “the world’s reserve currency” means. It’s absolutely massive, far too big to suddenly collapse. How and with what aim would international debtors suddenly demand payment? What kind of mechanism are you envisioning and why would these debtors do this in the first place? US debt is the most reliable in the world - everyone knows exactly what they are getting into.
The only realistic possibility is that the USD slowly loses relevance, similar to the British Pound - but this coincided with the decline of the British Empire and the dwindling importance of Britain in the world in general and in regards to trade in particular. America is still the only superpower for the foreseeable future (50+ years at the very least) and there is nobody else that might take the scepter, in regards to both soft and hard power. By that point, China (which is currently busy self-destroying its soft power with Xi’s moronic “wolf warrior diplomacy”, by the way) will have long imploded under the weight of its many unsolvable issues, chiefly among which the gigantic self-inflicted wound that is their demographic decline. The EU might be much stronger and more united at that point than it is now or it might not be, the Euro could be more important than it is now then or perhaps not. This largely depends on what’s going to happen to Eastern Europe.