Photo – China is about to collapse: Why do aesthetic scholars take a sharp turn? | read magazines

After Zhang Jiadun of the United States published the book “China Is About to Collapse” in 2001, the discussion about whether China’s economy was collapsing immediately became a hot topic in academic circles. The 2008 Chinese Olympics once overshadowed Zhang Jiatong’s theory of China’s collapse. At the same time, the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States gave people a sense of change in the status of major powers in which the United States and China exchanged time and space. After China’s GDP surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy in 2010, few people in the academic circle mentioned the theory of China’s collapse, and it was replaced by the discussion of when China surpassed the United States.

Around 2015, China’s economic growth was sluggish and showed a downward trend. Then, especially in the context of the US-China trade war, there were many problems in the Chinese economy, and China began to prevent gray rhinos and black swans. In 2021, after a series of new policies by Xi Jinping, the Chinese economy will suddenly experience a catastrophic downturn, but these gradual economic fermenting does not give the whole Chinese people a face-to-face empathy. It was not until 2022 that the closure of the city in Shanghai was dynamically cleared, the suspension of the few major financial income earners in Shanghai, and the incidents of “unfinished buildings” and bank refusal to pay deposits in many places. Avalanche-style presentation in front of the world.

More than 20 years ago, a debate broke out in China on the “advantage theory of latecomers” and the “advantage of latecomers”. The protagonists of the debate were Lin Yifu and Yang Xiaokai. Lin Yifu’s main point is that in the process of integrating into the world market, we should not repeat the long road of research and development that developed countries have experienced. We can quickly introduce advanced technologies from developed countries, whether they are purchased or “plagiarized”, “used for I use” to save time and cost, take the “shortcut” to develop rapidly, and catch up later. To do all this well, the key is to have a good development strategy.

Yang Xiaokai does not deny the advantages of “late movers”, but Yang emphasized that if he just blindly pursues the “bringing doctrine” and ignores his own institutional innovation and technological research and development, he can only always run behind the developed countries and be accepted by others. control. Therefore, Yang advocates to look at the two latecomer theories together, and not to become addicted after tasting the sweetness of the “latecomer advantage”, and even mistakenly think that his originally backward system and rotten culture have suddenly become “advanced”. If so, it is precisely the evil of “later disadvantaged”. Therefore, Yang emphasized that it is easier for backward countries to imitate technology, but it is more difficult to imitate institutions. Emphasizing technical imitation and ignoring institutional imitation will leave many hidden dangers in long-term development, and even long-term development may fail. This is the disadvantage of “late movers”.

“Later-mover advantage theory” and “late-mover disadvantage theory” have long been discussed in American textbooks of “Development Economics”, but Lin and Yang just used them to make an extension and concrete expression in China at that time. As two academic theories, each has its own merits. However, under the circumstances of China at the time, the Chinese government was interested in directly introducing advanced Western technology without disturbing the original system that should be changed. Therefore, under the instruction of the Ministry of Education of China, Chinese universities cannot mention the “later disadvantage theory”, let alone allow discussion, because high-level officials believe that it is “overseas hostile forces” on China’s four basic principles and development strategy “in disguise” Attack” and “late-mover advantage theory” have become the golden rule in Chinese college textbooks. Not only students of the Department of Economics are familiar with it, but students of other majors must also keep it in mind, and they are also appreciated by senior Chinese officials. Under the so-called institutional advantage of the CCP’s obsession with concentrating its efforts on major affairs, the “late-mover advantage theory” has been directly elevated to the basic economic development strategy of the CCP that can catch up with the West.

As for the imitation of the system that Yang Xiaokai mentioned that late-developing countries must pay attention to in catching up and surpassing, some scholars assert based on this that only political reforms can create conditions for economic reforms. The different outcomes of political transition in different countries after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the comparison of their respective countries’ economic reform and development provide a variety of explanations for the system imitation of late-developing countries. It is difficult to generalize into a general pattern of economic system reform and political system reform. However, the dilemma that China’s development model has reached today has made us see more of the serious drawbacks brought about by this development model and a deeper understanding of the “curse” of the development of a late-developing country.

Now, looking back at the practical consequences of Lin and Yang’s argument more than 20 years ago, China still abides by the law of commercial equality when it first brought doctrine to the West. But once the Chinese are familiar with the Western business rules, they do not follow the business rules that restrict both sides like their Western counterparts, but use the gray areas in the business rules, or blatantly violate the spirit of the contract, turning learning into “plagiarism”, Buying becomes “stealing,” and importing becomes “leaving money for the road.” Its violation of the spirit of commercial equality is mainly manifested in the failure to fulfill the commitments made at the time after more than 10 years of accession to the WTO, and it can be traced back to the fact that the original commitments were only for the purpose of obtaining approval, rather than respecting the spirit of the contract. A mutually egalitarian trade behavior eventually turned into accusations of China’s unequal trade from all over the world, and finally triggered Trump to open a trade war with China.

If we can do the most succinct analysis of China’s 40-year road change, it is to carry out large-scale civil engineering domestically and export cheaply to the outside world. Western countries are private ownership, and cost accounting and funding sources limit the unlimited expansion and investment scale of state and private capital. Under the guidance of various violations of egoism, China’s state-mixed capitalism, relying on the introduction of foreign capital and reckless domestic bank credit, gave birth to China’s civil construction boom in just a few decades. The accession to the WTO has created an excellent opportunity to capture the world market share for cheap export commodities produced with low labor costs. This result has rapidly shortened the gap with developed Western countries.

In addition to causing tensions with Western countries externally, China’s development strategy of overtaking on corners is taking shortcuts in domestic economic development and relying too much on real estate. According to the World Bank’s analysis report on China’s real estate industry in June this year, the proportion of real estate investment in developed countries is generally 5%, and more than 10% is deformed. In China, from 3% in 2003 to 14.8% in 2014, it will still be 12.9% in 2021. Because for local governments, the development of real estate is to enclose land and sell land. The operation is simple, the income is fast, and the profit is not lost. The government has revenue, officials have rebates, developers have interests, and the people have a house to live in. All are happy. Coupled with the authoritarian system in which the centralized government concentrates its efforts on major affairs, the development of real estate in the past few decades can be described as flourishing, and the business is booming. 25% of China’s economic growth comes from real estate and various activities in its supply chain, 30% of government revenue comes from real estate, and 88% of residents’ wealth comes from real estate. The prosperity of real estate is not only the abnormal result of the Chinese government’s one-sided development of real estate, but also one of the most important reservoirs for absorbing the Chinese government’s over-issued currency in the past few decades. Its direct manifestation is the soaring housing prices. The landscape quickly changed to the cause of China’s booming economy and its homage to communist China.

Today, from the Evergrande real estate debt crisis last year to today’s large-scale unfinished buildings and “collective loan suspension” in many places, as well as the decline in housing prices in most cities, the bursting of the real estate bubble has become a reality. Next, people will pay attention to whether this real estate crisis will detonate the financial industry that is transfused into real estate. As for the large-scale economic stagnation caused by the “dynamic clearing” policy, the point is not that once the “dynamic clearing” policy ends, the economy will naturally recover. The problem is that a sudden halt in a disease-ridden economy will detonate the economic landmines that were already buried here and there, leading to a full-blown economic downturn. Just like a sudden stop of a high-speed train running on the track, the entire train box will collide , twist , derail and roll over. If such a situation occurs in the operation of the social economy, it will not be able to recover in the short term.

In 2017, economists He Qinglian and Cheng Xiaonong in the United States published a book, China will be in a “collapse but not collapse” mode. “Crash” means that every step of China’s economic development has simultaneously caused various economic, environmental, social and political festering. “Collapse” means that the Communist regime will not collapse for at least ten years. Many years ago, Zhu Jiaming, one of the four gentlemen in the capital in the 1980s, who is now a professor at the University of Vienna, once said that as long as one-third of China’s provinces have a surplus, the Chinese economy will not collapse. The above forecasts all leave room for China’s economic development, but it is a consensus that China’s economy has major problems.

When talking about crises in a certain historical period in historical narratives, the outbreak of a certain event is often used as the starting point of the crisis, because such emergencies have different results caused by historical development. In real life, the same things happened before the crisis broke out, but it was far from the shock effect of the whole society after the crisis broke out. From this perspective, the development of China’s economy is already in the process of a crisis coming. As for when and how much storm the crisis really broke out, it is only a matter of time, not an academic proposition.

After 1978, China’s economy has developed rapidly for 40 years, which is different from the cyclical operation of Western economic development, and has never experienced a major downturn. This wave of China’s economic downturn, from the perspective of the economic development cycle, may be the beginning of the cyclical recession of China’s mixed economy, which will recover later. But whether it can be restored to the original speed, especially the optimization and adjustment of the economic structure, and how to get out of the economic cycle to maintain a reasonable operation, no one knows how long the adjustment cycle will be. Another possibility is that the Chinese economy will fall into a cycle of constantly investing in new debts to ease the distress of old debts. High speed will become the yellow flower of yesterday, and it will never be possible. , which is the only policy that the Chinese government is still taking. As for the ambition to surpass the United States, I am afraid it can only become a sigh of relief.

In the history of world development, there have been many brilliant empires. Empires take centuries to build, but their collapse is often the trigger of a fleeting event. The economic volume generated by China’s 40 years of reform has reached the second largest in the world, and it has also contributed to the Chinese people’s dream of reaching the top of the Chinese Empire. However, China’s economic development strategy has led to the intensification of the internal development contradictions of the economy itself. Coupled with the acceleration of Xi Jinping’s series of misjudgments on the political and economic development strategy, it is not a fantasy that the achievements accumulated over the past 40 years will be destroyed. In this sense, judging the series of economic signals that will occur in 2022, it can be said that the catastrophic consequences of China’s economic development have begun to turn from the rise to the downward. Compared to Zhang Jiadun’s prophecy in 2001, I am afraid that this time the real time has begun….

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