Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
While the world sees China as a booming economic power, here is a most unsettling inside look at what's really happening as the Chinese economy begins to run out of steam.
After reporting on China for more than a decade and hearing constantly from a wide range of its citizens, Dinny McMahon has come to a startling conclusion: the narrative of China as an ascendant superpower is fraught with misconceptions. Discovering brand-new factories that have been shut down, finding empty and relatively new abandoned cities, and looking under the cover of a shadow banking system, McMahon has methodically pieced together the alarming truth that China's perceived economic growth is a myth built on a staggering mountain of debt. And when that debt bubble bursts, the whole world will suffer.
McMahon follows the stories of a diverse set of characters to show how the Communist Party is able to keep fueling China's economic growth by appropriating long-held land from poor citizens in order to build more useless factories; how Chinese entrepreneurs are looking to relocate their businesses overseas, including one who is trying to set up his textile company in South Carolina; and how the mayors of ghost cities that sit abandoned across the Chinese landscape are attempting to lure citizens to move there. Debt, corruption, a speculative frenzy, and an aging population are pushing China toward a major financial recession. The entire global economy is at risk.
Synopsis
A stunning inside look at how and why the foundations upon which China has built the world's second largest economy, have started to crumble.
Over the course of a decade spent reporting on the ground in China as a financial journalist, Dinny McMahon gradually came to the conclusion that the widely held belief in China's inevitable economic ascent is dangerously wrong.
In this unprecedented deep dive, McMahon shows how, lurking behind the illusion of prosperity, China's economic growth has been built on a staggering mountain of debt. While stories of newly built but empty cities, white elephant state projects, and a byzantine shadow banking system, have all become a regular fixture in the press in recent years, McMahon goes beyond the headlines to explain how such waste has been allowed to flourish, and why one of the most powerful governments in the world has been at a loss to stop it.
Through the stories of ordinary Chinese citizens, McMahon tries to make sense of the unique--and often bizarre--mechanics of the Chinese economy, whether it be the state's addiction to appropriating land from poor farmers; or why a Chinese entrepreneur decided it was cheaper to move his yarn factory to South Carolina; or why ambitious Chinese mayors build ghost cities; or why the Chinese bureaucracy was able to stare down Beijing's attempts to break up the state's pointless monopoly over the distribution of table salt.
Debt, entrenched vested interests, a frenzy of speculation, and an aging population are all pushing China toward an economic reckoning. China's Great Wall of Debt unravels an incredibly complex and opaque economy, one whose fortunes--for better or worse--will shape the globe like never before.