From Peter St. Onge at Mises Wire we get the following: China Enters the Doom Loop
Debt. Debt. More debt.
China's authoritarian gerontocracy has built a Doom Loop with Chinese characteristics, with over half the economy now crashing.
Chinese exports are now plunging at the fastest pace since the covid lockdowns: Exports fell 14.5% on the year, driven by a 21% drop in exports to Europe and a 23% drop to the US.
Meanwhile, imports to China are also falling -- 12.4% on the year -- as shrinking manufacturing buys fewer inputs and households buy less.
Hat tip to SHTF Plan.
That isn't the only article on this subject. There were plenty Monday morning. China's economy is hitting a wall after years of optimism, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says
China's economy is finally hitting a wall after years of optimism about the country's future, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said.
"There can now be little doubt that just as the conventional wisdom way overstated the economic prospects of Russia in 1960 and Japan in 1990, so have China's prospects been greatly exaggerated in this decade," Summers said in a Washington Post op-ed.
That doesn't mean that you should discount the threat.
"What does all this mean for the United States? No one should conclude that we can be complacent about the Chinese geopolitical challenge. Indeed, as Russia's behavior in Berlin, Cuba and Eastern Europe during the 1960s illustrates, nations that see the economic route to glory foreclosed can become irrational and dangerous," Summers said.
Nothing strange here, every economy that has started out based on cheap labor and lots of exports runs out of time. The Japanese hit their wall decades ago and the new kids on the block like India or South Viet Nam will follow in their footsteps. The "economic miracle" always end the same way. The same people who were standing in awe of China's future were the ones in the eighties touting Japan as an unstoppable economic power. All of this makes the alarms about the coming dominance of the BRICS nations such a joke. Adding together a bunch of inept and poorly run economies does not make a powerhouse. The end of the American empire is in sight, caused by all of the same mistakes empires have been making since antiquity, but it is internal not external.
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