After the death of Mao, China’s embrace of free markets sparked one of the largest economic booms the 20th century has ever seen. But is China now in regress as the communist party tries to widen its control over the economy?
Xi expects business as well as people to serve the CCP. As authoritarian controls metastasize throughout the economy, everyone suffers. For instance, even foreign enterprises now must accommodate party cells. The Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei reported on a Chinese “official, one of several who had helped introduce Western-style stock trading to China,” who cited “a worrisome trend of the party inserting itself more into companies’ affairs by pressuring them to accept Communist Party committees in their offices. ‘The whole thing about getting listed companies to set up party committees,’ he said, ‘is a reversal of what we had tried to do’.”
“Everything in the Party, nothing outside the Party, nothing against the Party”
But wait it gets worse.
The current crisis in the Red Sea impacts Chicoms more than anyone else. It is their traffic to Europe that is most affected. Now they have to sail all around Africa. They sent a delegation to Iran with generous loans and credit and asked them to call off their attack dogs and Iran suggested Chicoms pound sand. Meanwhile North Atlantic is safe and US exporters to Europe are happy. Maybe this explains why US is not doing much the Red Sea. Oh and Egypt is getting a shaft in the process.
But wait it gets worse.
While we hear about alleged robbing of Africa by Chicoms and exploitations and rare earths and mining and environmental degradation, it turns that those success stories (for the Chicoms) are a minority and in most cases Africa wins again. Again “heads don’t match the bodies”.
The real proof of deep economic trouble in China is much simpler. The McRib is back.
Might seem an odd measure, but McDonalds only brings back the McRib when pork prices are low enough. During the Chinese boom, they were buying so much pork that it was not available at a price McDonalds could work with, but with the Chinese economic meltdown they are not buying as much pork and the price has fallen.
The ‘One Child’ policy is biting them in the @$$. The workforce that got China to where it is today is retiring and they didn’t produce enough munchkins to replace themselves.
It’s not the only factor, but it certainly isn’t helping China.
Meh.. We do the same thing.. We just call it human resources.. Commissars none the same.. Central control of the economy by people with their own agenda.. Power, politics, greed.. It hardly matters..
The host slowly dies..
Just so, the 40,000 Chinese who have recently slipped across Biden’s porous border also serve the CCP.