Sure, but China suffers from enormous environmental cost as well (cement is ridiculously terrible for the environment; now think about what drives most of their paper growth), under an inherently unstable hybrid between market capitalism and state economy, coupled with what can only be described as a demographic WMD, an erratic leadership that, through purges after purges after purges, is busy erasing even the pretense that it's operating under technocratic principles - and on top of that, you get these heave-handed attempts at information control. The latter in particular has never ever worked at making people forget that the economy is on a downwards trajectory with absolutely no sign of even slowing down, let alone a solution that doesn't involve launching a major war in Asia in the hopes that rallying around the flag will somehow prevent the whole house of cards the CCP has been busy building over the last couple of decades from crashing down.
Xi inherited many of the issues China is suffering from, but he also inherited a nation that was slowly opening itself and reversed that course almost from day one. Instead of realizing the untapped potential the emerging Chinese civil society had, he only saw it as a threat and clamped down on it through positively Maoist measures. He has also done everything in his power to make the economic situation worse, all in the name of securing his rule and that of his party (in that order). Xi's answer to economic woes and the demographic decline is mass slavery, which I feel the world will finally stop accepting the moment China oversteps its bounds towards the outside. A war against Taiwan would do it, but I feel like even a major escalation in their (at this point) ten dash line imperialism, perhaps against Japan, could be enough to trigger substantial backlash.
Bunch of amateurs. Don't they know that the proper approach is to flood the internet with articles of "the economy is doing amazing, you peasants just don't know it"?
Every day i wake up and take a shower watching a youtube video about how China is falling apart at the seams internally and it really lightens up my mood!
You are making it too complicated Winnie the Pooh. Just do what we do in the West. Hire a bunch of economists to go on the TeeVee or in dead tree media and tell everyone that all is fine.
Reports this week from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal detail efforts by Chinese authorities to scrub the internet of negative takes on the state of its economy.
According to the NYT, The Ministry of State Security said in its official WeChat account that citizens should not believe the "false narratives" about the trajectory of China, and instead should believe in President Xi Jinping's vision.
Meanwhile, officials continue to espouse an upbeat outlook for growth this year, even as the economy grapples with a cocktail of bearish headwinds including a troubled real estate sector, crashing stocks, deflation, and youth unemployment.
In one example cited by The WSJ, an article from a Beijing-based outlet that called for more direct state intervention in addressing economic challenges was erased from the website within hours of publishing.
That, too, disappeared shortly after it was published, and on WeChat, a message appeared to those trying to access it on Li's account: "The content can't be viewed due to violation of regulations."
Experts have told Business Insider over recent weeks that the "uber-bearish" narrative on China has become entrenched, and that authorities have slim chances of engineering a rebound in the near term.
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Most countries do not do this. In fact, from what I have seen the Internet lines to talk about how bad the economy is, even when it seems to be doing well. There's always someone pushing the negative spin on economic news.
China is one of a very few that blocks and takes down Internet content for merely disagreeing with their message.