Funny to remember how widespread making fun of the "Soviet Gerontocracy" was in the 70s and 80s in western media and politics. This is so so so much worse. Suslov, Brezhnev and Chernenko at their worst and most decrepit state were monsters of vitality and intellect compared to what we are seeing from Amerikkka these days.
You can put renal failure induced encephalopathy Andropov on the debate stage 5 minutes before he died and Biden would still seem barely sentient comperatively
This has strong Kaplya energy word to word tho they are @droplet now and your account is older. weird
Either way, how do Chinese households borrow to consume if both their savings growth, their income growth and the consumption growth have been comfortably and sustainably larger than HH debt growth? HH debt can also be a bunch of things not related to most aspects of consumption so unless we have some ready to go data we cant know where that debt went and its a huge leap to call China's consumption growth "debt fueled". Like HH have to borrow to be able consume but also HH savings are at the same time growing faster and higher than HH debt ? They get in debt to be able to sustain their consumption but also they are able save up more than the debt they get into ? Doesnt pass the smell test.
Also the aggregated debt figure compared nominaly against the GDP may tell us absolutely nothing about how distressed the average household balance sheet is given the income and regional inequalities in China in the last decade and the economic activity of different groups. Its much more likely that upper middle housholds and individuals leveraged too much on the property market and speculation (irregardless of their returns) and on the average household level i would imagine most debt figures have accumulated from the explosion of car purchases and payments that foundementaly add a bunch to HH debt calculation no matter how healthy peoples balance sheet is. So Its less of an issue if HH debt going up mostly as a function of mortgage penetration for higher income earners but not coming at the expense of savings or consumption (but also not financing those things) for the average houshold.
Also as far as the real estate sector bubble popping/delevareging goes that is already a reality for almost 3 years now. Sector has already dropped as a % of gdp by a notable margin, prices depending on city tier have droped from somewhat to a bunch . If that was to have any major impact on HH consumption we would have seen it by now. But HH consumption numbers follow the same trend and growth regardless. Connected to that is the fact that , yeah many people invested on real estate beyond buying their first house, but many for China is still a small minority of the population and concentrated in urban upper-middle class people. But how many Chinese people do you actualy think have invested in real estate and/or stocks? 30 million ? How many people borrowed to invest even , which is something you throw out with such certainty ? Many can be 4 million but are you sure thats an impactfull sum for China?
Ok lets imagine that. These 30 million people do contribute a lot in chinese consumption since they they make up a large chunk of upper middle class people like i said. And their grivances get disproportionate coverage both inside and outside of China. But the future of chinese society and economy isnt for them. Its for the 300 million class people moving up the ladder to a middle class lifestyle. The vast majority of these people didnt speculate on real estate or stocks and the deleveraging of the property sector not only doesnt hurt them but it actualy opens up the road for more affordable housing and as a result more disposable income for consumption. And thats what we have been seeing. From income to consumption to savings the YoY growth for that bracket has outpaced both GDP growth and that of upper-middle class chinese. Chinese govt does not in fact consider the pains of people who’ve already made enough money to gamble on stocks or speculate on real estate beyond owning the house they reside in as determinal to the engeneering of a future economy more fair and benifiting for the much larger working class people in lower economic brackets.