China did not have a decades run of real growth. It appeared that way, sure, as every year China achieved its forecast 5% increase in GDP exactly on target. Not 5.05%, not 4.95%, but 5.00%, a magnificent endorsement of centralised government planning. Then in the noughties the truth started to out, initially with 64m empty apartments (based on electricity non-usage) in 2005? 07? followed soon by the ghost cities, dozens of them, which would have been serviced by ghost infrastructure and created by shadow debt. And sold as investment properties, because property never drops in value. And GDP continued to increase.
Concrete has a limited life, nowadays, because it is reinforced with steel bars so that you can use it in a state of tension. The Romans didn’t use steel, they designed their buildings (see the Pantheon for an example) so that all the concrete members were permanently in compression and didn’t have any members in tension (or they would have fallen apart immediately), but steel rusts, and as it rusts it expands and cracks the concrete, and becomes weaker because there is less metal, and less concrete. The quality of the reinforced concrete determines the rust resistance: quality meaning not just the quality of the mix and the steel, but how well it is poured. In a corrupt environment such as Chinese local government, short term obsolescence is built in. Hence the viaduct collapse at the beginning of the clip. Which is good for GDP, of course.
And the Cap’n is right, because you have the same problem in America, only delayed by a few decades because you used better quality materials and methods. The collapse is built into the system. You have all these high rises, dams, bridges, tunnels, airports, roads, sewers, power grids which are deteriorating. Try looking in the carparks of office or residential blocks over forty years old, and see if you can see concrete repairs at the bases of the pillars. They are only plastering over the rusty reo, there is no replacing the lost strength. There are many trillions of infrastructure replacement costs coming down the line at you, and no budget for it.
As Hooky says, the system is bankrupt. And infrastructure is only a part of it. Health care, bankrupt both morally and financially. Manufacturing, shredded and not coming back despite the tariffs – some of the deals being made are simply relocating the offshoring, e.g. China to India or Vietnam. Debt, debt and more debt. Bureaucracy, that great enabler of collapse, is receiving a bit of a setback in selected areas like EPA, Green New Deal, wokeness; but the underlying trend is more and more regulations.
All the failed promises of the CCP are coming home to roost. No prosperity, no permanent rise in house prices, no jobs, compulsory scrapping of perfectly good EV’s so you have to buy a new one, ditto white goods, gotta keep the factories running, keep the hierarchy happy with good figures …. bleak? Yeah, I think so. I’m impressed that they’ve got the mental and emotional energy to protest. Many of the youth are just lying flat, and why not? When you can’t see any hope of the light at the end of the tunnel being turned back on, and your every action is tracked.
Fight back, Cap’n? When, as you say, it’s already gone? Futile, I think, and it only makes yourself a target. Prepare, though, as you say, prepare by organising locally so when supply chains collapse you still have food. Learn skills. Keep a low profile. Educate your kids and grandkids, for all this too will pass and they need to be ready to rise like phoenixes.
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