The Biggest Domino

Looking past the impressive growth rate, we reveal China to be a country balancing on an unhealthy level of borrowing and dwindling foreign demand. We ask whether the Chinese bubble might burst?

"They consume the lowest share of GDP ever recorded. It's not at all practical - it's not logical and it's not sustainable." In a city of bright lights and optimism, where everything seems to move at an impossibly fast rate, Professor Michael Pettis sees trouble ahead. He shows us a "ghost city" - a whole town in Inner Mongolia built from scratch, where row after row of apartment blocks, a theatre and a library, sit empty. It's a concrete example of China's "if we build it, they will come" mentality: state owned banks provide loans to more state owned companies who build and develop, paying taxes to local authorities - possibly where no demand actually exists. "You don't have an infinite capacity for borrowing", says Michael Pettis, "so one way or the other China will rebalance". But China seems undeterred. When the world economic crisis provoked a collapse in international demand for its goods, it responded with a massive $800 billion stimulus package. China's citizens are ever-optimistic, but could the country renowned for confounding the critics, for absorbing all economic glitches and charging ahead, finally get a wake-up call?

Produced by ABC Australia
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Category:

• Documentary

Tags:

• china
• economics
• import
• export
• australia
• economic
• crisis
• journeyman
• pictures
• news
• documentary
• current affairs
• journeyman pictures

[LendMeYourHand]

@AssyrianRebel1 I agree. Yet any other circumstance would have these offshore bankers at the end of a short rope. Do we really have anyone to blame other than the American empire that spawned this desesintized reality that lacks any responsibility or accountability for their actions? Much less any compassion for human life. I have seen plenty of souless actions by the standard China man, yet it is just a mirror image of the inpracticality of U.S. lifestyle. Lizard brains.

[AssyrianRebel1]

@LendMeYourHand Well I think it's useful to look at the other side of the equation when it comes to this major economic imbalance we find ourselves in.

Surely the west (mainly the United States / Europe) are at the head of a massive ponzie debt scheme of consumption / money creation. But were they able to get into this position? It's because of the policies of China and to a lesser extent Japan.

We are at the cusp of the largest defaults in history (either direct or inflationary)

[LendMeYourHand]

I find it just fucking hilarious that a video was made about China, when the whole world is based off a criminal fractional banking system & is infected every economy Thruough the Mafia IMF. Yet, every fuck stick on this planet dont have the mentality to comprehend right from wrong. As a global banking cartel steal from the poor & send this world spiraling into holocaust. I have no faith in the human race anymore, when you people are this fucking retarded. Sell US debt for copper.

[blueice990]

there will be always be demand considering there are still over 700 million chinese that still live in the countryside and moving to the cities, but the government probably have to intervene to facilitate this process.

[gobipill]

"Even so, most people are better off than they've ever been before."

I think this is important to remember. People are looking at China, comparing it to the US, and asking why it's still not as good. But I think that's far too much to ask. In the 1960s, when the average American had cars, television, a stand-alone house, etc most Chinese people earned less than $10 per month. To go from that state of living to what they have today is already very good. Anything more would be a miracle.

[waki26]

@jacobg1777

Hahaha US's dick was downed. That enough and satisfying.

[jacobg1777]

@waki26 USA knows where Iran's underground labs are at! They have many many spy planes and spy satellites! USA is going to destroy their labs with the new missile they have designed 2 years ago! It can destroy things underground very deep! Joke is on you!

[jacobg1777]

@waki26 Hahaha what does that prove that a country can shot down a spy plane? Lol that's nothing! It's not like the drone has anti defense missiles on it! lol... USA would murder Iran with no problems! There has been thousands of times USA has flew over Iran! Wow they shot one spy plane down out of the thousands of time we have flew a spy plane over their! USA also has spy satellites watching IRAN! USA has developed a missile to destroy underground labs! Even if their 1000ft below!

[waki26]

@jacobg1777

you will be finished!

[waki26]

@jacobg1777

Haha I just read the latest news:

US's spy drone was downed by Iran.

YOU WILL LIKE IT.