Loading ...It became clear 25-30 years ago that the numbers were being fudged. Nobody ever meets their GDP targets to within one tenth of a % year-in year-out, especially when the target was always 5%, later 7%. So when the 64m empty apartment statistic came out in the mid-noughties the explanation was clear; capital misallocated into speculation. Complete with roads, railways and bridges to nowhere, followed by as you say the ghost cities, dozens if not hundreds of them, all build with the help of Aussie coal and iron ore pushing our $ way above parity.
So tariffs aren’t going to affect Chinese GDP at all. 🙂
One can imagine that there are two factions at work in China. The Xi faction determined to not back down from Trump for nationalistic purposes, and the non-Xi one more concerned about social unrest. Because Trump is going to tariff China anyway a certain amount of social pressure will occur regardless, which you would think would strengthen Xi’s hand. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Their military is untested. What can be deduced is that its structure is very political with all ranks selected on the basis of connections, CCP affiliations and bribes. It is going to be totally dysfunctional if it ever comes to battle which is probably quite dangerous as when the invasion of Taiwan, for example, starts going pear shaped the temptation will be to save face by escalating with nukes, which may or may not work either. Especially if Taiwan strikes the dams.
As Buygold said a week (decades ago!) none of the above could be construed as negative for gold – not that we want to find out whether China’s nukes work or not under any circumstances!