China February 2024
28th February 2024
China continues trying to make the best of a bad situation they cannot seem to control; a shrinking population, a workforce that is shrinking even faster and markets for its exports leveling off. These three factors mean China’s Ponzi scheme economy has reached its limits with substantial declines now in progress. Other East Asian nations have similar problems, some not involving on-going Ponzi scheme financial systems, after having experienced a sustained economic boom that has moved much of the population into the middle-class. China too has prospered and given several hundred million Chinese prosperous middle class lives. This is unprecedented in Chinese history. One of the downsides of this prosperity is that couples have fewer children. When poor, families have more children because that is how people can create some support for their old age. Children do that and in the absence of savings, children have traditionally supported their elderly parents. Because of all the prosperity, that ancient form of old age care is eroding.