Love you, love your dog. Lock you, lock your money. This is the overall conclusion of my 30 years life in China. After going through abusive childhood, traumatic exams-oriented selection system, patriarchal Confucius, ideological propaganda, cyber police, and the last end barrier I found is, unexpectedly, a bank card. If you ask me how far away are Chinese people from the world, I’d say a bank card away. Before leading to my point, here I need to give you some unobtrusive facts which is vital in analyzing China’s financial status quoFirst, 600 million people earn less than 137 dollars a month in China till 2021 , this data is announced by China’s ex-premier during a national conference in Pandemic era. Unfortunately, the day after I put down this sentence, the news came out that the ex-premier was dead from a heart attack shortly after his retire from the seat, which caused quite a surprise and some rumor you can imagine. Second, the majority of Chinese people don’t have access to a credit card, not mention to visa or master card. That is to say, all their money is kept in Chinese banks, and fixed in the circulation of domestic market.Third, Chinese people can’t exchange foreign currency as they like it. And the exchange rate is manipulated by Bank of China, which is different from the global market, in case some carried foreign cash back from the travelling. Thus, to get a foreign bank account is a privilege for those who have enough money (for example, to open a Citibank account in China requires at least 100k USD deposit), or enough knowledge (for example, studying abroad) to do so. And privilege is called privilege because it always belongs to the 1%. Most Chinese people’s assets is therefore locked, and nailed in the geographic zone of China despite the globalisation. This invisible lock is, for now, the most powerful tool I’ve seen to enslave the mass. Or I should say, money is invented for this purpose but people somehow forget about it because it exists so long in our history that we take it for granted. For more detail, please check Debt: The first 5000 years by David Graeber.Now let’s get to China’s real estate bubble.Western media are fanning up this apocalyptic scene, as I remember, since 2007. And the latest warning was in August, when US president Joe Biden said, “China is a ticking time bomb”, I got it instantly what he referred to and I laughed. In case you don’t have the background information: Evergrand and Country Garden are two property giants in China, and respectively the former is in debt of 300billion USD, the later 200 billion USD. Yes, they’re a tip of iceberg, and yes, there will be ripple effect, and correct, real estate contributes a quarter of China’s GDP. You’re right, it looks gloom and doom. But only in WESTERN perpective. China is not United States nor United Kingdom. Imagine you blaming a Chinese toddler for not being able to recite Shakespeare. Who’s is really mad here. Personally, the reason,I think, that makes US so mad, is because most of the debt that those property companies own are from the US. In other words, the 1% in the US don’t earn enough profit and worse they don’t get their money back. This is understandable, right? I also wish my borrower dead when he can’t return my money. But you know. “Too young too naive” is a comment given by ex-ex president of China, who died last year, and who was at the time very close to the US. This is a comment he gave to retort the journalist around the dispute on Hong Kong’s democracy. “Too young too naive” It hurts, but it is true in some way.

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