An ex-colleague is of Venezuelan origin. He was born there, but left in his early 20s to study in the US. Although he wanted to return home, there was never a real opportunity when he started his career, he was soon hired by my ex-firm, he is a few years younger than me, but worked for me. I really nice and smart guy. Going back was never really an option. His parents lived half and half between the US and Venezuela so when Chavez took power, they never returned and still live in Florida.
We were discussing failed states, after my short write-up on South Africa, I have important ties with that country. We discussed Venezuela, according to the government the economy is doing well (GDP growth of 5%) and everything is all right.
On the ground things are different. Daily power cuts and water cuts are standard. Unless you work for the government you no longer have a refrigerator, generators were confiscated about two years ago. Having anything frozen is too risky. The exodus has been brutal, at least 7 million Venezuelans have left the country, and virtually all the competent oil engineers left two decades ago. You see it every day in the capital, as vacated apartments stand empty.
The Russian, Chinese, and Venezuelan continue to send statistical data to the World Bank, but everyone knows it's fake, made-up data. On Venezuela, the CIA Factbook stopped showing economic data after 2018, because they didn't believe the information (in 2018 GDP shrank by nearly 20%).
China, revised its population statistics 3 times in the last 18 months, removing nearly 150 million people from its population data. These are official Chinese figures...Of course on many subjects China has simply stopped collecting data, if you don't have the information, you cannot lie about the information!
The veneer of wealth remains in the major metropolitan areas which is true in Moscow and Beijing. But in other places such as Johannesburg and Carcass, they can no longer hide the rot. It's too awful, so despite Maduro saying economic growth is strong...the country is dying, and Venezuelans, South Africans, Chinese and Russians that can, are leaving.
Note: China is not a failed state, it's still a huge and populated country, but the Chinese recognized that the population never reached 1.4 billion, it probably never exceeded 1.2 billion. These are official statistics. The 2022 declared birth rate is problematic, every Child in China is given the BCG vaccine within a day of birth. The total number of vaccines given in 2022 is less than half of the declared birth for 2022. China stated that there were 77 million births in 2022, but only 33 million vaccines were given that year which means that in 2022 there were about 44 million births (each vaccine is sufficient for 1.2 babies). The BCG vaccine is imported. BTW that's when inconsistency in statistics shows up.
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