China’s Economic Malaise

According to a recent op-ed in the New York Times, China’s economy is not doing so well; in fact, it might be hitting a “dead end.”

Anne Stevenson-Yang, a writer who focuses on China’s macro-economy, argues that the CCP’s over-investment into industries like infrastructure, the energy sector, and real estate has left the economy unstable and citizens in monetary binds. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have also recently warned that cheap Chinese exports flooding the global marketplace are making it tremendously difficult for American businesses and workers to compete. 

Stevenson-Yang argues that “the ‘reform and opening’ era, which has transformed China and captivated the world since it began in the late 1970s, has ended with a whimper.”

Not only is this leading to issues for Americans struggling to cope with inflation and rising costs of living, per Stevenson-Yang, but China’s economic bind is leading to “malaise” and intense dissatisfaction among Chinese citizens as well.

Gish Yen, a teacher working in Beijing, wrote a New York Times op-ed in April illuminating how things have drastically changed in China over the last few decades due to the failures of the CCP to properly regulate the economy. 

She writes, 

In this famously cosmopolitan city, there are weirdly few foreigners compared with before, many having left because of the stifling policies during the pandemic or because international companies have pulled out employees, or other reasons. Clothing shops are empty and many other stores have closed. The Nanjing West Road shopping district, previously a sea of humans, is strangely underpopulated.

Chinese emigration to Western countries is on the up and up due to such overwhelming economic stagnation. Over the past two years, China has seen a 62 percent increase in emigrants: over 300,000 per year versus a previous average of about 190,000. 

Many of these people are trying to enter the United States; Border Patrol reportedly encounters hundreds of illegal Chinese immigrants every day. 

The former president Donald Trump has warned of the consequences of allowing such immigration to go unchecked. Will his vision of an America First foreign policy be allowed to prevail in November, or will the empty statements of U.S. officials like Blinken and Yellen continue to be all talk and no action?

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