I and a few brave experts such as Jim Chanos, Gordon Chang, and David Stockman (speaking at our upcoming IES conference) have been arguing for years that China has the greatest investment and overbuilding bubble in all of modern history.
We've also warned that its economic statistics are not real – they are purposefully overstated and then revised later, if at all.
I don't see how this top-down dinosaur of a centrally planned government can continue in power. I don't even know how it can exist in a free market/democracy-driven age that already saw the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union fail miserably.
This is their current strategy to stay in power: Hiring low-skill workers to build more infrastructure and real estate than is actually needed, and keep moving unskilled immigrants from rural to urban areas on a scale never before seen in history…
The demand isn't even there! They're just building things no one's going to use just to keep these people employed and happy. It can't continue. And when it doesn't, I don't see how China will be able to stop these people from revolting.
Since 1983, over half a billion Chinese have moved to the city. 220 million of those just since 2002!
And there are now over 220 million urban residents that are not legal citizens where they live – like illegal aliens from Mexico here in the u.s.
Do you see a problem if this overbuilding and debt-fueled strategy of over-expanding finally ends?
There will be hundreds of millions of unskilled workers stuck in cities. And they won't even be able to go back to their rice paddies. By now they're probably paved over with empty condos!
China's government thinks if it keeps the people employed then they won't question the corrupt, crony capitalist system in place. So it continues to push its top-down planning through local communist governments that almost totally drive infrastructure and business investment – with no regard whatsoever for free markets!