Things are worse than they appear in China

I don't mean to be that broken clock that just happens to be right by sheer chance, so I will take responsibility of the matter if I turn out to be wrong. But all the indictors are pointing towards the same thing-China is in big big trouble-and it's hard to deny that macro prediction. I've already written on the various 'bombs' that have started a chain reaction in the country. In this piece I'll argue that something even more stark is happening-the official numbers, bad as they are, hide an even more terrible state of affairs.

Couple of points. First, the central CCP committee has made much noise about the importance of an fabricated data and has pretended to punish local and provincial bureaucrats for fabricating data. This suggests that one, they have discovered the limits of a centrally planned communist authoritarian rule-people would much rather lie and pretend progress than admit failure. To admit a failure on the information front is no small matter. Second, the latest directive is to central government to not give contradictory instructions, and to local agencies to not follow the central directives unthinkingly. A communist central agency instructing its arms to stop being such sheep and use their brains is... rich... It will never work but that's besides the point. To admit, in public, that their centralized authority is working too well... is an admission of defeat of the existing policies, things must be so very bad! Third, the attempt to rein in the little pinks 'nationalistic fervor and bravado means an internal consumption-driven economy as was originally planned is not in the medium term horizon. The CCP has surely figured out that they the Chinese) are on the path of growing old much before the get rich, and the window of opportunity to turn things around is escaping rapidly. Either the populace has to be forced to birth kids, or the future of China's demographics will reflect Korea's very soon!