It's all that Stuff They Did Before

The Real Reason China’s Economy Is In Crisis

When Tom Friedman at the New York Times praised the "China Model," I took it as a leading indicator that its economy would hit the wall in a decade or so. He was orgasmic over all those High-Speed Electric Trains! But after getting the State Run Railway to start building them, getting them to stop proved even harder. Now they're riding the High-Speed rail to nowhere. But what's an extra Trillion Dollars or so of debt? Certainly, the U.S. Congress would agree.

Similarly, getting them to stop building buildings (they could house half the planet) proved harder than convicting Donald Trump of something.

A centralized "Industrial Policy" can work well in the "catch-up" phase of economic development. If it proceeds too long -- which it almost always does -- it becomes the "ketchup phase," with lots of blood on the market floors as various bubbles burst.

In the 1980s I thought Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI -- 1949-2001, RIP) was going to prove me wrong until, quite suddenly, it didn't. Currently, Japan's stock market approaches the high set in...1989. And that's thanks to the capital fleeing China and looking for a home.

As a result of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP was on its back in 1980. That is a big reason why "Socialism with Chinese Crony-Capitalism Characteristics" could succeed as long as it did -- with a big helping hand from Walmart, Amazon, and Wall Street. Now that the Giant has awakened, they need to knock it over the head again if they want to get back on the growth track.

I'll Take that One-in-a-Million Chance!

New documents strengthen—perhaps conclusively—the lab-leak hypothesis of Covid-19’s origins.

Gee, who knew.

I used to tell people that the Wuhan China Lab-Leak conspiracy theory started in the Wuhan lab. I wonder if the original conspiracy theorists became involuntary organ donors. The "they doth protest too much" reaction of Officially-Designate-Scientific Opinion everywhere suggested an embarrassing level of American involvement at the lab, if not in the specific research that may have resulted in the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the sort of experimentation that was banned in the US.

And now I read:

The DEFUSE proposal was authored by Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance in New York, with partners including Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. The grant proposed to “introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites” into SARS-related viruses, a procedure that could have led to the creation of SARS2, with its distinctive furin cleavage site, depending on the starting virus used for the manipulation.

Oh, OK. Of course, there is still that one-in-a-million chance it originated "in nature" in a cave 500 miles from Wuhan, so don't believe everything you read.

Lab-Leak Leak Links Lab to Lab-Leak

The CCP's Olympic Backsliding

We Need To Discuss This China Economic News

In the 1980s I read that the USSR's rate of capital investment was growing yearly and way higher than in the USA, and I thought "Uh-oh for us." Then I read that all that capital investment was producing a negative return -- that they weren't just running on a treadmill to get ahead, but running on a treadmill and falling behind -- and I thought "Uh-oh for them." As regards Communist China, have we transitioned from the "Uh-Oh for us" stage and into "Uh-Oh for them?"

The Chinese leadership blamed political reform in the USSR for the collapse of the communist regime and vowed not to make that mistake. This is like blaming the cancer on the desperate remedies used to slow its spread. Now they've tossed that politically convenient "two systems" pledge (allowing limited political and economic freedom) onto the Ashheap of Chinese History. What desperate measures will Xi Jinping use to avoid that same fate?

China hits Parkinson's Wall

 50% Crash: Shocking Reports on Wages, Land & Debt | Chinese Economy |

Tony, on his China Update YouTube channel, gives quite level-headed assessments of the Chinese economy. So if he headlines "Shocking Reports," then the reports are shocking to, you know, level-headed commentators. Which doesn't include me. For a while I've thought a few "lost decades" (an extended period of slow growth) going forward was the best-case scenario for China.

Back in 1964, my ninth-grade glee club ushered at a lecture by C. Northcote Parkinson, a humorist, satirist, and inventor (discoverer?) of Parkinson's law. Here it is, as far as I can remember:

1. Bureaucracies expand, regardless of the amount of work.
2. Officials seek to multiply subordinates and neutralize rivals while creating work for each other.
3. Work expands to fill the time available.

Well before Hong Kong returned to China I gave it 20 years (out of the agreed-upon 50) as an international financial center. The CCP wouldn't immediately kill the golden goose because, after the first Cultural Revolution, it needed the eggs. Over time, the "private economy goose" would grow into a rival to the CCP's official economy, where inefficiency is in the self-interest of those in charge. Add in the shake-up and uncertainty at the top of the CCP -- the start of a second Cultural Revolution? -- and stemming the flight of international capital is not a high priority (if it's a priority at all). This is not a peaceful period of "Work Expands" but an ongoing  CCP purge and "Survival Demands."

Economists can propose but Parkinson's law will dispose.

COP-Out China

 COP28 Climate Change Conference

They're throwing another Climate Change feast somewhere and the number 28 means there were 27 previous party-hardies for the Climate Control Crowd. Peter Zeihan provides a short summation of what is going on. Apparently China, often held up as a model, is in "count me out" mode on the latest proposal.

Zeihan makes a point similar to the one I've been making for decades: CO2 is like "the little gas that could" in the global warming catastrophe scenario.  It works on a narrow spectrum of sunlight and is quite potent when first introduced but soon approaches its "upper limit" when it comes to greenhouse warming. At this point, its additional effects are rather small (water vapor is more powerful and when will they do something about the rain?). To get its assigned Civilization-destroying job done, CO2 needs a lot of help. This comes in the form of "feedback loops."

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas.  There is a lot of methane hydrate at the bottom of the ocean, where the pressure and the cold keep it trapped.  Warm the Oceans and this methane is released, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect and a potential mass extinction event.  This is the "feedback loop" that all the other "feedback loops" lead to.

There is a problem though. Methane breaks down rapidly in the atmosphere and in a few years much of it is gone and in ten years all of it. So it can't be a slow, steady release of methane, it has to happen quickly to produce the kind of effects that will make fearful populations willing to pay more taxes, higher more bureaucrats and submit to more control. Not Enough Government seems to be the real crisis all these Climate COPs are addressing.

The Gang of Qin Gang

 Chinese Economy: ‘Shocking’ New Reports | Qin Gang Update | Huawei & iPhone

This morning I educated myself on the latest goings-on in China -- which apparently involves a gang. I was eating my cereal and wiping a bit of milk from my chin when I heard about Chin, apparently the leader of the gang, and also something about a gong.

The Chin Gang made me think of the Gang of Four, who were a big deal when Mao left for his appointment in hell. How do I know they were a big deal? I heard of them. If I remember correctly, it involved Mao's widow -- a former cabaret singer -- plus some other guys grabbing for power. Now, a dying dictator's floozie wife wanting to take over is not unknown (think Evita! or Doctor Jill!). Unfortunately for the conspirators, minions who can watch millions starve under incompetent leadership are stirred to action when their own lunch is threatened. So the Gang of Four became the Grateful Dead (them not being the Grateful ones) instead of the Grand and Glorious Leaders.

Which brings us to that nefarious group, the Chin Gang. After dealing with my chin milk I listen.  It was about Qin Gang (pronounced tch-in g-uh-ng by the Mandarin-speaking, New Zealander show-off reporter).  So it was the g-uh-ng of Qin G-uh-ng? No, it's just a simple sex scandal -- only sex scandals are never simple (otherwise it wouldn't be a scandal). It happened in Washington DC!  Qin was China's ambassador to the USA whose mistress was a Chinese journalist! All our floozies are now journalists! Strippers should sue!

Qin gets such favorable coverage from under the covers that he returns to China and is promoted. Only sex scandal! FBI bugs are in the expensive sheets! His journalist babe had his baby -- an American baby (it's a club anyone can join). Qin disappears to spend more time with his family -- maybe in a prison camp, maybe in the cemetery: ask not for whom the g-uh-ng tolls, it tolls for Gang.

As for the Chinese Economy tanking, who cares?  Sex Scandal!

Euro-Chat with China Canceled

 

China Cancels Summit with EU's Foreign Affairs Minister Borrell || Peter Zeihan

In my comic-lite Opera The Prodigals of Pennance, the EU Leadership describes itself as a "Fellowship that Practices Follow-ship." Peter Zeihan gives a similar description.

Then there's China, where the leadership locked the fellowship in a prison ship -- the expected result of an anti-corruption campaign where everyone is corrupt. Now Xi stands alone and likes it that way. He's the Hermit at the Helm: the Great Hermit Helmsman -- whose compass has gone kinda crazy. His plans are grand but the mood is petulant.

If you're going to be "the drunk" at the garden party, then don't go to the garden party.

Lab-Leak Leak Links Lab to Lab-Leak

Peter Zeihan || COVID: What Really Happened in Wuhan?

Peter Zeihan says the US government bureaucracies that stated, with low confidence, that the SARS-COV2 virus leaked from the Wuhan China lab are not known for their medical expertise.

However, the FBI and the Energy Department weren't providing funds to the Wuhan Lab, whereas some of the more prominent government "lab-leak" deniers were funding-involved. In the early 2000's Congress -- playing to the "superstitious rubes" in the hinterland -- banned gain-of-function research in the US. Is it possible that those whose careers were dependent on this work used the Wuhan lab as a way around the ban? Let me suggest, with low confidence, that yeah, they did.

The evidence in support of the "lab-leak theory" has been around since 2020. Citing the evidence back then got you labeled a conspiracy theorist and a likely right-wing racist. Where Big Science and Big Politics meet, one hand washes the other -- or is it a scrub, clear up to the elbow, with careful attention to under the fingernails?