I’ll make four observations over China:
1. About three years ago, I watched a business interview. American entrepreneur who’d gone to using China for production in his products back around 2000. Around 2013, he found that the groups he’d been using for a decade were now inflating their prices....expecting a higher rate of return...and this terrific profit scheme that he’d developed was now in trouble. He was going move production out of the major urban area of eastern China to some central region. More rural....a chance to stay at the pricing levels he wanted. I got the impression that he had maybe five to eight years before they were going to price him out. This China-on-fire economic system has probably a decade left before people reach a stage that the cheap manufacturing angle wont work.
2. There is a huge amount of income going into China....tons of money. So, hiding money is now a full-time occupation for Chinese business operations. If you glean the papers daily....hundreds of Chinese are quietly walking away from China each month with millions and attempting to resettle elsewhere. I see it in the US...I see it where I live in Germany. A small but growing population of Chinese now reside in Germany. This group fears the government getting into their business, or their newly acquired wealth.
3. Inability to handle the wealth. I sat and observed a story last week on a new subway station that was finished off. Big huge exit point....in the middle of a cow field. Nothing there...not even a paved road. Probably four miles outside of any urbanized area. China news people said it was built because of a long-term requirement written up by one city government, and large funding pot held by a second government organization. The truth is...they didn’t need this built for another decade. Use? Probably every hour....four subway cars will pull in and stop....with no one getting on or off, for at least three or four years. Maybe in a decade, it’ll prove it’s worth.
4. I travel a good bit around Europe, and in the past three years....noted more and more Chinese. On an average day in Heidelberg...around the tourist zone...there’s probably 300 Chinese people arriving by bus. They walk around...seem amazed by the landscape, the structures, the food, and the drink. They leave and return to China with a vision of introducing those things there. As much as people think that China is always going to be China....I would suggest that these travels to places like Europe, the US, and such....are going to waterdown Chinese society and introduce new issues in the decades to come.
That's what having so, so much money does - you no longer care about keeping it nice.
I hear the Chinese govt is cracking down on opulent displays, like chauffeurs everywhere. I'll see later in the year when I'm up that way again if it has any impact on the overseas kids...