Insecure RDT.

In his annual New Year's Eve address China's President Xi Jinping said, "China's economy has strong resilience, great potential and vitality." But in downtown Guangzhou, the commercial hub of China, "Streets are lined with shuttered stores and workshops." "Roads and alleys once packed with migrant workers are now mostly empty." The chaotic reversal of the zero-Covid policy has led to "a tsunami of infections that has swept across the nation, overwhelming hospitals and funeral parlors." The Communist Party of China (CPC) exercised total control through "regionally decentralized totalitarianism (RDT), which combines highly centralized control over politics, ideology, and personnel with decentralization in administrative and economic affairs," wrote Di Guo & Chenggang Xu. However, during post-Mao reforms "RDT evolved into regionally decentralized authoritarianism (RDA)." That is huge, indeed. "However, since Xi came to power in 2012, China has shifted back towards totalitarianism." Not fully. Chinese leaders are now boldly displaying grey hair. "Dark suits, red ties and identical helmets of jet black hair," mocked Celia Hatton on BBC. But in November 2012, "retired premier Zhu Rongji had dared to go grey". Surely, that could not have been possible without Xi's encouragement, who was unabashedly sporting streaks of grey on his own head, as were several others, during this year's Party Congress. CNN. China's real estate market is in deep trouble. "Evergrande, which is the world's most indebted property developer, had been struggling to make payments on its over $300 of liabilities and missed a crucial repayment deadline on its offshore debt in December. Its shares have fallen by 75% over the last year in Hong Kong." BBC. "To maximize their financial gains from land, governments at all levels try their best to raise prices by reducing supply," wrote Guo & Xu. Then "Using land as collateral, governments across China have borrowed massively from state-owned banks pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio to 300% in the first quarter of 2019." "A 20-year-long real estate boom, fueled by proceeds from pre-sold homes and debt, has made Chinese property the biggest single asset class in the world, worth more than a staggering $50 trillion." BS. "China's home prices and sales have fallen for record 11 months in a row," because of "the refusal of tens of thousands of homebuyers to pay mortgages for unfinished construction projects." "As American companies recalibrate the risks of relying on Chinese factories to make their goods, some are shifting business to a country far closer to home: Mexico." ET. "China will almost certainly remain a central component of manufacturing for years," but, "In 2021, American investors put more money into Mexico - buying companies and financing projects - than into China." Will economic insecurity make China more aggressive, as the US believes? CNN. That will be bad for India.