China Faces Mass Social Unrest

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by capmac, Dec 5, 2008.

  1. capmac

    capmac

    Rising unemployment and the economic slowdown could cause massive social turmoil in China, a leading scholar in the Communist Party has said.

    "The redistribution of wealth through theft and robbery could dramatically increase and menaces to social stability will grow," Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the Central Party School in Beijing, wrote in the China Economic Times.

    "This is extremely likely to create a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil," he wrote.

    His views do not reflect leadership policy but highlight worries in elite circles about the impact of the economic slowdown.

    Mr Zhou warned that the real rate of urban joblessness reached 12% this year and could reach 14% next year as the economy slows.

    China's annual GDP growth has already slowed to 9% in the third quarter, from 10.1% in the second. Some forecasters see growth slowing to 7.5% next year.

    The government has launched a stimulus package and cut interest rates to boost the economy.

    Unrest warning

    Last month, China's top planner warned that the economic slowdown in China could fuel social unrest.

    Zhang Ping, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the impact of the global crisis on China's economy was deepening.

    "Excessive bankruptcies and production cuts will lead to massive unemployment and stir social unrest," he said.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7766921.stm
     
  2. Funny, the first thing he said was redistribution of wealth, only fair after the last 30 years of redistribution of wealth to the rich! What ever happened to chinese socialism?

    So anyway, what's the goal here, to sell a substantial increase in domestic security and loss of personal freedoms?
     
  3. Tums

    Tums

  4. most of the unemployment that made up this 12-14% is in rural china / migrant workers. The average salary of those workers are about $200 a month, it is an acceptable salary as the cost of living in those areas are very low.

    China has over 1 trillion usd in cash reserve alone, and the average citizen in the country has zero debt. It can easily create employment for all of those workers as required by means of public social/infrastructure projects. In fact it already has done so recently.

    This article is ridiculus, if it wants to argue china will be hit by the global slowdown/export that's fine, but to indicate somehow there will be a revolt to overthrow the government because of economic slowdown is nonsense. Actually short of holding gold, chinese yuan is probably one of the safest currency right now, far better than the dollar. Of course no western country will do so due to the natural fear of the "evil" communists.

    In some ways china is more capitalist than the US nowdays, which makes me very sad...
     
  5. The ironic thing to me is I would put the probability of social turmoil much higher in the US than in china if this situation continues for the next 5 years.
     
  6. I would agree with you, for 2 reasons:

    1) The relative impact on your average US citizen will be greater than on the Chinese counterpart. As long as there is subsistence food for the Chinese they will be calm'ish, where as the US citizen will crack long before he can't feed himself.

    2) The US authorities will never be allowed to be as dictatorial, authoritarian and rutheless as the Chinese will be, to quell any potential uprising
     
  7. Specterx

    Specterx

    The USA has been through this before in the 30s, and the only major incident of unrest I can think of is the Bonus March.

    I'm not a China expert, but (afaik) back in the day the state made sure that you had food, a job, a place to live, and basic medical care. Conditions were bleak but they were stable, more or less. Now you have all these millions of migrant workers in the cities, and if they can't find work then they just starve in the streets, which is a recipe for unrest. Civil disturbances have been becoming more common in China for years now. With no democratic system and with the Maoist rhetoric mostly gone, the Chinese government derives legitimacy from the economic growth it delivers. Without that, all they have left is sheer military force.
     
  8. I would like to add one more reason; Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. It would be harder for US government taking away liberty of survival from its citizen harder than their counter party in China.
     
  9. sumosam

    sumosam

    also, in china, the law is whatever the government says so. there is no social safety net....you die if you don't work....so why not rebel if you are going to die...what is there to loose?

    this is not socialism/communism. it is facist.
     
  10. According to Marc Faber, Chinese economy is already shrinking.
     
    #10     Dec 6, 2008