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China's newest problem: Excess capacity

 Consider that until about two years ago, about a quarter of China's GDP was related to the construction industry.   In the past two years, dozens of construction companies have gone into bankruptcy.   The big names are known the world over, Country Garden and Evergrand, they were/are massive companies with hundreds of billions in debt and tens of thousands of unfinished projects (I am not making this up).   The Chinese government "decided" that others than the construction industry would now benefit from the largest increase in capital (aka lots of cheap/free debt), and so manufacturing production rose.   

It is important to understand that the goal in China is not the end result but the process.   It is not the millions of empty, useless apartments that have been built (the Chinese government recognized formally a year ago that there are more than 500 million empty apartments in China) it is the purchase and building of things and the jobs and GDP statistics it provides.   The objective is to show that China has a healthy job market and a fast-growing economy,  The easiest way to quantify your success is to count the number of widgets you produce.

Six months ago, Janet Yellen went to China, left as the most pro-China American member of the administration but returned as a hawk.   Anthony Blinken went to China to have a serious conversation with Xi Jinping and was ignored.   Anthony Blinken does really care, he's apparently a mean SOB, but he confirmed what the Biden administration long assumed, that the Chinese government is dumping its express production on the world market.   The biggest are solar panels but soon electric cars.

Not only is the US in the middle of a presidential election year, but the Chinese are making it easy for Biden to take a very anti-Chinese position and impose massive restrictions on the import of Chinese goods that are deemed to be dumped.  Normally this would give rise to a trade war, but China has actively restricted the sale of consumer goods in China for years, the biggest brands (excluding top luxury goods) are no longer available in China and have not been available for years.   funny enough the company the most at risk here is Tesla, 80% of all Tesla Y are exported out of China and not sold domestically, so far none are sold in the US (Canada and Europe only) but still... Trade wars have a way of escalating!

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