Something Is Happening in China: We Don't Know Yet What

[PeterRS]

It's been splashed over all the newspapers. China is in a mess - certainly economically and almost certainly politically as well. Local governments are mired in debt. The two largest property developers are quickly drowning in monstrous debts, they cannot sell much of their inventory and have been unable to complete many that Chinese citizens have already paid for. This has led to at least one riot. Almost 12% of recent graduates cannot find jobs. With youth unemployment already at 20.4% in April this year, so many are out of work that the state has now ceased publishing statistics. President Xi's admonition that, as during Mao's Cultural Revolution, these young people should go and work in the countryside has met with derision. In an age of social media, China cannot clamp down on all dissent despite the huge numbers it employs to censor it.

Just a year ago Xi was elected to an unprecendented third 5-year term in office. Before then he made sure he was surrounded by his own cronies. Many top government and other officials had been jailed for corruption beforehand, although corruption remains virtually endemic. Now, though, even those he placed in top leadership posts are disappearing. Recently, two of Xi's hand-picked five state councillors - five who enjoy a higher rank in the cabinet than ordinary ministers - have disappeared. Some weeks ago Foreign Minister Qin Gang was ousted after vanishing for more than a month. Three weeks ago Defense MInister Li Shangfu sudenly disappeared, despite having been promoted to his position only in March.

Next, the removal of two top generals has shocked the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, the elite unit set up by Xi to modernize the country's armed forces. The lack of transparency in these disappearances and forced resignations is not new in China. The high level of all four coming at one time is of particular concern, though, given that Xi himself has also chosen not to attend international gatherings where once he was lauded. Some analysts point to Xi's own power being diminished and his leadership abilities questioned within the Party. Is he now afraid of what might happen to his position if he were to leave China? All this at a time when China is playing a much tougher game overseas with its alliances with Russia and North Korea and its increased sabre-rattling over Taiwan. 

Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, has compared what is going on internally to an Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None". How much he actually knows about what is happening in China is clearly open to question, but he himself has asked another question, "Who's going to win this unemployment  race? 'China's youth or Xi's cabinet?'" Perhaps a question aimed more at a US audience, but it is one being increasingly discussed in other parts of the world.

And all this still baffles those who recall that Xi's father, a participant in the Long March and a pal of Mao who made him Vice Premier, was a man lauded for his moderation. He was an early proponent of the easing of control over Xinjiang and Tibet, even having the Dalai Lama to stay at his home when he visited Beiiing. What has turned the younger Xi into a self-styled Mao? Is it because his father was purged, jailed and spent long periods in confinement during the Cultural Revolution? How iong can the younger Xi last? Will he make a bid for internal harmony by going to war with Taiwan as a means of taking attention away from the severe jobs and other crises he faces? My own view is that within China there are enough citizens who would baulk at Chinese fighting Chinese and the massive death toll that would result. But that's already the subject of another thread.

Based on this article on the CNN website - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/19/china/china-top-ranks-turbulence-questions-xi-intl-hnk/index.html

[KeepItReal]

6 hours ago, PeterRS said:

It's been splashed over all the newspapers. China is in a mess - certainly economically and almost certainly politically as well. Local governments are mired in debt. The two largest property developers are quickly drowning in monstrous debts, they cannot sell much of their inventory and have been unable to complete many that Chinese citizens have already paid for. This has led to at least one riot. Almost 12% of recent graduates cannot find jobs. With youth unemployment already at 20.4% in April this year, so many are out of work that the state has now ceased publishing statistics. President Xi's admonition that, as during Mao's Cultural Revolution, these young people should go and work in the countryside has met with derision. In an age of social media, China cannot clamp down on all dissent despite the huge numbers it employs to censor it.

Just a year ago Xi was elected to an unprecendented third 5-year term in office. Before then he made sure he was surrounded by his own cronies. Many top government and other officials had been jailed for corruption beforehand, although corruption remains virtually endemic. Now, though, even those he placed in top leadership posts are disappearing. Recently, two of Xi's hand-picked five state councillors - five who enjoy a higher rank in the cabinet than ordinary ministers - have disappeared. Some weeks ago Foreign Minister Qin Gang was ousted after vanishing for more than a month. Three weeks ago Defense MInister Li Shangfu sudenly disappeared, despite having been promoted to his position only in March.

Next, the removal of two top generals has shocked the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, the elite unit set up by Xi to modernize the country's armed forces. The lack of transparency in these disappearances and forced resignations is not new in China. The high level of all four coming at one time is of particular concern, though, given that Xi himself has also chosen not to attend international gatherings where once he was lauded. Some analysts point to Xi's own power being diminished and his leadership abilities questioned within the Party. Is he now afraid of what might happen to his position if he were to leave China? All this at a time when China is playing a much tougher game overseas with its alliances with Russia and North Korea and its increased sabre-rattling over Taiwan. 

Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, has compared what is going on internally to an Agatha Christie novel "And Then There Were None". How much he actually knows about what is happening in China is clearly open to question, but he himself has asked another question, "Who's going to win this unemployment  race? 'China's youth or Xi's cabinet?'" Perhaps a question aimed more at a US audience, but it is one being increasingly discussed in other parts of the world.

And all this still baffles those who recall that Xi's father, a participant in the Long March and a pal of Mao who made him Vice Premier, was a man lauded for his moderation. He was an early proponent of the easing of control over Xinjiang and Tibet, even having the Dalai Lama to stay at his home when he visited Beiiing. What has turned the younger Xi into a self-styled Mao? Is it because his father was purged, jailed and spent long periods in confinement during the Cultural Revolution? How iong can the younger Xi last? Will he make a bid for internal harmony by going to war with Taiwan as a means of taking attention away from the severe jobs and other crises he faces? My own view is that within China there are enough citizens who would baulk at Chinese fighting Chinese and the massive death toll that would result. But that's already the subject of another thread.

Based on this article on the CNN website - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/19/china/china-top-ranks-turbulence-questions-xi-intl-hnk/index.html

I suspect the heavy handed way Xi was able to control the country, completely and utterly, during Covid has awaken imperial desires. But that is just me, after too much morning coffee. 🫣

[Moses]

8 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Almost 12% of recent graduates cannot find jobs.

They cannot find job not because there is no job, but mostly because they don't want to work on factories and want to have workplace in the office right after school...

At past 7 years I had about 15 Chinese students here in Moscow (private lesions, you may think whatever you want 😈), all are now returned to China after finishing UNI. All found job within 2 months or less.

 

8 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Three weeks ago Defense MInister Li Shangfu sudenly disappeared

As per disappeared minister - it is revealed already: he was find "red-hand" in sex during his visit to US and fired. It was revealed 2 days ago. 

[PeterRS]

15 hours ago, Moses said:

As per disappeared minister - it is revealed already: he was find "red-hand" in sex during his visit to US and fired. It was revealed 2 days ago. 

And the world actually believes this is the reason? It is Chinese propaganda.  The real reason is that he will have angered Xi in some way and Xi absolutely does not tolerate that from ministers, senior or not.

[Moses]

On 9/21/2023 at 6:19 AM, PeterRS said:

It is Chinese propaganda

maybe, but this

On 9/21/2023 at 6:19 AM, PeterRS said:

The real reason is that he will have angered Xi in some way

is just pure speculations...

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, Moses said:

maybe, but this

is just pure speculations...

With respect that shows how little you know of Xi and his ways of controlling his Party leaders.

[vinapu]

On 9/20/2023 at 9:03 AM, Moses said:

They cannot find job not because there is no job, but mostly because they don't want to work on factories and want to have workplace in the office right after school...

At past 7 years I had about 15 Chinese students here in Moscow (private lessons, you may think whatever you want 😈), all are now returned to China after finishing UNI. All found job within 2 months or less.

 

As per disappeared minister - it is revealed already: he was find "red-hand" in sex during his visit to US and fired. It was revealed 2 days ago. 

I'd say it's rater worldwide phenomena that graduates don't want to work in factories etc , that's the whole point of taking studies.

as for your example ( I corrected lesions to lessons, auto corrector must screw this up) while no doubt it's true , keep in mind that statistic sample is too small and we are talking about graduates of foreign university whose job hunting was no doubt easier. Who sends their children to study abroad, I doubt taxi drivers , plumbers or provincial school teachers.

about propaganda , that is the problem with it, even if true , a lot of people won't believe it anyways. If having sex would be reason for dismissal then who would be working ? 

[PeterRS]

On 9/20/2023 at 8:03 PM, Moses said:

At past 7 years I had about 15 Chinese students here in Moscow (private lesions, you may think whatever you want 😈), all are now returned to China after finishing UNI. All found job within 2 months or less.

7 years is a long time. The graduate crisis that has become serious in China is post-covid. Covid caused deep fissures in the country's economy. Almost everything in China has been changing rapidly since 2019. Look at the real estate market. We know that the debts of the two largest companies, Evergrande and Country Garden, are over US$500 billion and the inventory of unsold properties is rising daily. 53 smaller developers have collapsed in little more than two years.

$14 billion of Country Garden's outstanding local and foreign currency bonds have lost at least 90% of their face value. We know that Chinese banks are owed over US$3 trillion by the property sector as a whole. Bloomberg estimates that the real estate development sector as a whole has debts worth 12% of GDP which are at risk of default. According to Bllomberg estimates, this places

"a massive burden that could curb growth in the world’s second-largest economy for years to come."

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/capital-markets/china-faces-property-debt-defaults-worth-12-of-gdp-be-says

Most local and regional governments in China depend for a large chunk of their income from the property sector. These local government bodies are vital to China's economy. But overspending on major infrastructure projects and plummeting returns from land sales have increased local government debt levels to US$12.8 trillion in 2022 - up by 50% from 2019. But these are only reported figures on balance sheets. Experts say the central government does not know the level of hidden debts.

After decades of increasing prosperity virtually each year, much economic activity in China has crashed dramatically. In such a scenario, it is absolutely the case that employment in better jobs has decreased substantially because the jobs are no longer there. Hence the graduate job crisis and hence the general youth unemployment crisis. China's economy is virtually in uncharted waters.

[PeterRS]

As the economic woes of China's property giants Country Garden and Evergrande continue to get worse, Xi Jinping and his cronies will surely start to feel much more heat from apartment owners who paid up front and now have nothing, contractors who delivered materials and have never been paid and local authorities which had banked on both land sales and property sales' income seeing bankruptcy at their doors.

Now another potentially more dangerous event has made his rule more complicated. On the surface, it's a simple affair - the death of former premier Li Keqiang of a sudden heart attack. Li was a reformer and much loved throughout the country during his 10-year premiership. Xi will no doubt be thinking back to 1989 and the death of another popular senior party figure and reformer, Hu Yaobang. Hu had risen to the post of General Secretary of the Party. In 1987 he was forced to resign by hard-liners for siding with student protests which had arisen countrywide. Yet with Deng Xiao-ping as his protector, he remained a member of the ruling Politburo. In Hu's place Deng placed another reformer, Zhao Ziyang. The student protests were quelled - for a time.

Hu died on 15 April 1989, like Li Keqiang of a heart attack. He was 73. Li was even younger at 68. So why should this be a worry to President Xi? 

Allegedly with his last words Hu had asked that he be buried simply without fuss, in his hometown in Jiangxi Province. Following his death there was a small scale demonstration urging the government to reconsider his legacy. It was virtually nothing in the wider scheme of things in that country. Yet a week later on the day of Hu's official funeral in the Great Hall of the People, word had spread and around 100,000 students marched in Tiananmen Square outside. They came to petition the government and handed a letter addressed to the hard-line Prime Minister Li Peng. The letter had no effect. The protests in Beijing grew and then started in other parts of the country. What began as mourning for a popular leader soon morphed into grievances about student accommodations, serious inflation and increasing corruption The leadership was shaken and uncertain how to react.

As the numbers in the Square continued to increase, on May 19 Zhao Ziyang himself came into the Square and using a megaphone begged the students to disperse. He knew what the Politburo was planning and he knew he was powerless to stop it. During part of that visit he was seen to be in tears. His address to the students was later smuggled out of China. His speech included the following excerpts -

"Students, we came too late. We are sorry. You talk about us, criticize us, it is all necessary. The reason that I came here is not to ask for your forgiveness . . . You are still young, we are old, you must live healthy, and see the day when China accomplishes the Four Modernizations. Unlike you, we are already old, and do not matter . . . We were also young once, we protested, laid our bodies on the rail tracks; we never thought about what will happen in the future back then. Finally, I beg the students, once again, to think about the future calmly. There are many things that can be solved."

Zhao bowed and then walked off. Most of the students applauded and many themselves were in tears. But they did not heed his warning. They were unaware that that very day Zhao had been stripped of all his posts. Within days, the Tiananmen massacre - or 'incident" as the Chinese leadership continues to call it - occurred. Zhao was put under house arrest and never appeared again in public before his death in 2005. Fearing another outburst of protests, Zhao's funeral was held among the tightest security.

Now comes Li's death. Already socal media has been awash with tributes. There have been public displays of grief, particularly in Li's home Province of Anhui. But today's censors are far more savvy than in 1989. Instructions have been given to ensure that mention of Li makes no mention of his advocacy of political or economic reform. The media has been instructed to stick to the party line when eulogising Li. Public mourning has been discouraged. I guess there is not much else Xi can do, given that the ideas of reformer Li who was appointed at the same Party Conference as ultra conservative Xi were quickly replaced as Xi concentrated all power in his own hands.

It is tempting to wonder what might have happened had Li become President rather than Xi. I suspect China would today be quite a different country. But we will never know.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/china-seeks-to-stifle-public-grief-for-former-premier-li-keqiang

[reader]

On 9/20/2023 at 8:03 PM, Moses said:

  On 9/20/2023 at 11:46 AM,  PeterRS said:

Three weeks ago Defense MInister Li Shangfu sudenly disappeared

As per disappeared minister - it is revealed already: he was find "red-hand" in sex during his visit to US and fired. It was revealed 2 days ago. 

Given China’s location, I find it difficult to believe that he travelled all the way to the US to have sex. I can think of someplace a lot closer—and a lot more accommodating.🙂

[PeterRS]

On 9/22/2023 at 7:47 PM, Moses said:

maybe, but this

is just pure speculations...

Speculation totally dismissed by virtually every expert knowledgeable about events in Beijing. As @reader suggests, it was a flimsy, unbelievable excuse covering up something a good deal more sinister.

[vinapu]

7 hours ago, reader said:

Given China’s location, I find it difficult to believe that he travelled all the way to the US to have sex. I can think of someplace a lot closer—and a lot more accommodating.🙂

like North Korea?

[PeterRS]

1 hour ago, vinapu said:

like North Korea?

Maybe Taiwan LOL