What if this is true? What if China's post-Deng economic miracle is, even to some extent, not real? What if, to some extent, it is a Potemkin Village? There have been some economic analysts who have been contrarian on China's economy for some time, one in particular, I forget his name, who is very bearish. They have gone to China, ridden on the mag-lev trains, and found them empty. There has been a lot written about China's own "housing bubble." A "building bubble" really. Lovely apartment buildings and office buildings and few people occupying them.
China is so damn opaque. It has always been difficult to get accurate information, even today like in the Bo Xilai affair. You have to have transparency in economic matters. China is now so economically integrated in the world economy that it has to follow the rules on economic transparency. It does follow the rules, doesn't it? The international financial regulators who look at China's books, they have looked, right? Everything is, more or less, okidoki? Even with the regulation in America, we had the financial crisis of 2008. Even with the post-recession reforms in regulation we still had JP Morgan take a $2 billion hit a couple weeks ago. What if?
China is not committed to capitalism. The people are not by nature capitalists. They would not accept a recession, much less a corrupt, incompetent government created recession. If there is a big problem with China's economy and ordinary Chinese get hurt, there's going to be a big problem.
