This should really terrify us all.<p>The Chinese economy is not just inflated, it's now an enormous chunk of the world economy. Throw in their really wild housing bubble [0] and it's a time bomb. Globalization has made everything cheaper, but it's tied us all together in many ways. They won't fall over alone.<p>Hiding news that the economy isn't doing well distorts incentives. Those with political connections will know what's really happening and take full advantage. Those without will make poor choices. Like buying a 4th unfinished condo as an investment.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china-can-t-fix-its-housing-bubble" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-24/why-china...</a>
The kind of "bad economic news" censored:<p>TABLE-China bond defaults rise over 56 pct from 2017 at $8.74 bln<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-defaults/table-china-bond-defaults-rise-over-56-pct-from-2017-at-874-bln-idUSL8N1WD3CR" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-defaults/table...</a>
The interesting thing for me here is a problem with all censorship: Those doing the censoring need to understand the issue to work effectively. So the censorship bulletins need to provide enough information that they become a source of truth. It gives investors an incentive to read them, because they are a factor in where the market moves.
Chinese "leaders" are in way over their head trying to direct the economy. Now they don't know what the people really know. Something tells me that clear and open information is the best choice but they have already gone down the rabbit hole.
Cannot help but wonder if we are seeing, right here in this comment section here, people paid to counter any discussion of a bad Chinese economy. Of course, I'll probably never know for sure.
It would really have surprised me to hear that they didn't.<p>Though there seems to be some relevance to the government's numbers, otherwise the market would totally ignore them.
I'm not particularly convinced this is much worse than what happens in the west, where people get their news from biased sources, be they Fox News, CNN, or Facebook. Sure, there's the theoretical difference, censorship is bad, etc., but practically speaking, the result does not feel that different...
I want to condemn this, but given the current state in western countries, I'd feel like a hypocrite.<p>We have so much light censorship and politicians get to lie without any consequences. The institutions who play along are rewarded and those who try to speak out about it are discredited.<p>There's illegal surveillance that we only get to know about from whistleblowers.<p>Political correctness is used to silence millions of people and invalidate opinions without having to debate anyone.<p>Elections are won through illegal social media campaigns.<p>If anything, China is copying us.