A point: for most Chinese, salary is just a small fraction of their real income. So the ratio could not be that bad.
OP has never lived in China and is making all arguments based on readings, and many on the fake news (biased reports) media. Wish he does not bet his saving on this thesis, since the Chinese stock market just turned bullish and will probably stay that bullish for at least another year or so based on previous cycle length.
Fascinating read... https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/08/27/willful-blindness-margaret-heffernan/ We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs. It’s a truism that love is blind; what’s less obvious is just how much evidence it can ignore. Ideology powerfully masks what, to the uncaptivated mind, is obvious, dangerous, or absurd and there’s much about how, and even where, we live that leaves us in the dark. Fear of conflict, fear of change keeps us that way. An unconscious (and much denied) impulse to obey and conform shields us from confrontation and crowds provide friendly alibis for our inertia
Again, nonsense. While a few may be afraid and fearful of negative repercussions in life and hence avoid the topic, most economics researchers are not. You basically call for the end of a super cycle without sufficient information at hand. In this age anyone can make any argument of his choosing and find SOME support on the internet. That is not enough. How many people have attempted to kill the Japanese yen? JGBs? And gotten bitten in their behind time and again. You might be right with your thesis and your timing prediction with a probability of 1 in 10mil, I constantly take into account that the debt binge in China will catch up with the economy and policy makers but it remains a small probability of it happening now. My point was that some or actually many here have all the information at their disposal plus some you don't have access to and constantly evaluate and re-evaluate. Accusing those of just being fearful and hence arriving at different conclusions is a poor mind's accusation.
You are not alone or even the first to be in that ship. Gordon Chang went to China in the 1980s, worked there for a decade and came back to US with a best-seller "The coming collapse of China". He had a good argument about about the bloated SOE (state-owned enterprises), but China was in the process of reforming them. However every-year he would repeat the exactly same predication even though his original argument is not valid anymore.
Ray Dalio seems to be one of the few people who predicated the rise (instead of the fall) of China in the 1980s and 1990s. "Back in 1984, I saw that there was nothing about the Chinese people that prevented them from being as successful as those in the developed world, and I knew that China was opening its door, I could imagine the essence of the big changes that would occur. Because the closed door was a barrier that led to two different economic levels to exist between China and the developed world, the removal of that barrier would naturally equalize their economic levels like unconstrained water naturally seeks the same level. I remember being on the 10th floor of CITIC’s “Chocolate Building,” giving a lecture and pointing out the window to the two-story hutongs (poor neighborhoods) and telling my audience that it would not be long before the hutongs would be gone and skyscrapers would be there in their place. They didn’t believe me and told me “you don’t know China,” and I told them they did not know the power of the economic arbitrages that would happen as a result of opening up. That opening was the biggest force behind the high rates of improvement that we saw over the last 40 years. " https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/looking-back-last-40-years-reforms-china-ray-dalio
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...s-jpmorgan-wannabe-deepens-with-bond-defaults https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...has-a-35-billion-fortune-and-lots-of-doubters Evergrande is now at 802 Billion Yuan in debt, aiming for 1 Trillion soon! Hahaha The company’s mountain of debt remains a significant risk. Evergrande’s net liabilities have quadrupled over the past five years to about $78 billion, while its financial leverage is more than twice as high as the industry average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. NET LIABILITIES equivalent to 78 Billion US!!!
https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-0...with-800-million-cross-default-101406441.html Cross Defaults... Didn't I predict this would help in the Downfall, of the Biggest Economic lie ever told ? communists are losing controllll... Tic Toc https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-0...les-deepen-as-creditors-circle-101406424.html
They also sit on a huge portfolio of land holdings. Not saying their debt level is not uncomfortably high but using a few examples and extrapolating to a lie of an entire economic miracle over the past 20 years is committing the same poor analysis than you have previously committed. Communists losing control? Lol, those are the same communists who can with the snip of a finger inject 400 or 800 billion yuan into a semi defunct corporate entity. Where the money is coming from? Don't ask don't tell but it's there and ready to safeguard large entities who might otherwise be at risk of collapse. You don't understand Chinese politics at all.
China is imploding, massive defaults reported almost daily... Looks like economic gravity is taking over, wonder what the communist lovers and closed minded trolls in this thread think now Minsky is peaking around the corner