{"id":4387,"date":"2011-06-14T08:23:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T14:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonapollovoss.local\/?p=4387"},"modified":"2018-09-21T02:06:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T06:06:04","slug":"social-unrest-in-china-on-the-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/2011\/06\/14\/social-unrest-in-china-on-the-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Unrest in China On the Rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

In my “What My Intuition Tells Me Now” 2011 Predictions<\/a> post of 13 December, 2010, I said that China was going to experience a lot of social unrest this year as they tried to reign in their overheated economy and inflated gross domestic product (GDP).\u00a0 Here specifically is what I said:<\/span><\/p>\n

“The Chinese are on the brink of two ugly things: massive asset inflation and the bursting of that bubble, and social unrest.\u00a0 Expect to see social protests in China as the haves and have nots gap widens.\u00a0 In typical authoritarian fashion though, the protests will be convincingly squelched.\u00a0 Expect to hear, if not see the true, dark underbelly of China.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Enter today: two stories from the Wall Street Journal…<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. China Raises Bank Reserve Requirements<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Wave of Unrest Rocks China<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Why is China raising bank reserve requirements?\u00a0 Because raising the amount of equity that a bank has to keep on hand -its reserves – lowers the amount of money it can lend out.\u00a0 Why would China want its banks to lend less money?\u00a0 Put another way: why do people borrow money?<\/span><\/p>\n

    People, including businesses, borrow money because they want to build or buy something.\u00a0 That something in China is property.\u00a0 Currently there is massive property inflation that is comparable to the real estate bubble that burst in North America and Europe back in 2008.\u00a0 This inflation is permeating the economy as the prices of commodities, like wood and steel, that support the building of property also inflate.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Also, there is a massive and continually widening gap between the haves and have nots in China.\u00a0 Not a good situation in a country that politically still calls itself communist.\u00a0 Not a good thing for a political system that oppresses its people in exchange for social equity.\u00a0 Oops!\u00a0 Hence, social unrest.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Regarding the social unrest, let’s let reporters do the reporting:<\/span><\/p>\n

    “A wave of violent unrest in urban areas of China over the past three weeks is testing the Communist Party’s efforts to maintain control over an increasingly complex and fractious society, forcing it to repeatedly deploy its massive security forces to contain public anger over economic and political grievances…<\/span><\/p>\n

    “Antigovernment protests have become increasingly common in China in recent years, according to the government’s own figures, but they have been mainly confined to rural areas, often where farmers have been thrown off their land by property developers and local officials.”<\/span><\/p>\n

    Unfortunately for China this situation is complicated by the fact that they run a police state government that is dishonest with its people, with foreign investors and even with itself.\u00a0 That means that the Chinese authorities are always processing some degree of misinformation and myth.\u00a0 It is very difficult to manage anything in life without good information.<\/span><\/p>\n

    This is my way of saying that these converging problems – looming economic bubble burst and looming social unrest – are only going to get worse in my estimation.\u00a0 But the real reconciliation that China needs to blow past is its social contract with its people.\u00a0 That is, is China a communist government with a one-party choice for its people, or a free capitalist society?\u00a0 The two are not compatible with one another and China has an existential choice looming.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Many people are describing the post-American world, but honestly folks, until China deals with this colossal issue the United States has very little to fear.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Jason<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      In my “What My Intuition Tells Me Now” 2011 Predictions post of 13 December, 2010, I said that China was going to experience a lot of social unrest this year as they tried to reign in their overheated economy and inflated gross domestic product (GDP).\u00a0 Here specifically is what I said: “The Chinese are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonapollovoss.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}