After borrowing — and largely wasting — $15 trillion during the Great Recession, China now looks like a typical decadent developed-world country, complete with slow growth, anemic consumer spending and unstable financial markets.
But it’s not France, Canada or the US, where recessions happen and voters peacefully replace one major party with the other. China, within living memory, has seen civil unrest beget open rebellion beget multi-decade civil war.
Just as Germany is never going back to hyperinflation, China will not tolerate mass protests. Which means it somehow has to find jobs for the tens of millions of citizens who aspire to middle class life. This need for growth at any price explains the borrowing/infrastructure binge of the past five years. And soon it will explain a massive devaluation/QE program. From Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
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