Is the sh*t about to hit the fan? Patrick Chovanec writes: I was on CNN the other day, being interviewed as part of a lead story on growing social unrest in China. Since my last blog post on the subject, one week ago, there was another bombing of a government office, this time in Tianjin, and a riot by migrant workers in a factory town near Shenzhen, just across the border with Hong Kong.
“…None of this is really that new for China. What’s new is that, because of the growth in reach and popularity of the Internet in China, people both inside and outside of China are hearing about — and talking about — such incidents for the first time. What’s also new is the urgency of the government’s response, in reaction to anxieties stirred by the example of the Arab Spring.
“…if you examine them, 9 out of 10 of these incidents are related to property removals and land development (the tenth is usually related to low-level harassment of vendors for bribes). So they’re driven, in a sense, by the boom that’s been going on, particularly in real estate, and the fact that there’s so much money to be made. In my view, this has been, in large part, an inflationary boom caused by too much money being created, so in that sense, it is tied to inflation. But now we’re also seeing asset inflation (which feels like a boom) leaking over into consumer inflation (which feels like hard times, and falls hardest on the little guy). That’s the reasoning behind my quoted comment that “”The people who were being squeezed now feel like they are being squeezed even more, to the point where they can’t bear it anymore….”
Find out more at :http://www.businessinsider.com/is-china-really-on-the-edge-of-mass-social-unrest-2011-6
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