This is many decades in the making. From useless infrastructure projects, to artificially deflating the yuan, to rampant IP theft, to making CEOs disappear, to destroying the entire IT sector, to fake economic figures, to crazy regional incentive models, to major corruption, to very restrictive foreign capital rules, and one of the worst looming demographic crises in the entire world. They're so racist and xenophobic they'll never be able to plug the gap with immigration either. Xi is reversing decades of Deng's economic reforms, and looks set to return China to Mao's policies. We have history to inform us of the likely outcome.

The good news for the West is that they've done such a good job of building an insular economy that even if all exports to China stopped today, it would barely move the market. Further, if they have a recession or depression, it will cut energy and food prices for us, reducing inflationary pressures. China is not a good world citizen. They pose a material threat to Taiwan, Tibet, millions of Uyghur muslims, and their neighbours. They champion authoritarianism, corruption, violence, and torture as means for power. I will not cry when they are weakened.

News about China is always feast or famine.

On Monday they own all batteries world wide, Tuesday it's economic apocalypse, Wednesday global domination.

man i never know when or if i can ever trust news about china, or news from china, or anything i hear about china, because there are so many special interests who WANT me to hold one particular opinion or another...

There certainly are parties who would benefit from the world believing this story, after all. Even if the benefit is as minimal as making western or capitalist construction firms look better. It's practically indirect advertising, making acceptance of high construction costs feel more palatable because "at least it's not like china" or some shit.

I've seen those videos where people are whacking the base of a pristinely painted concrete support pillar with an empty plastic water bottle and watching the material chip, flake, and crumble away like it's made of loose gray dirt and even then I felt this skin-crawling sensation that I'm being fucked with by SOMEBODY. They claimed it was part of one of those shiny brand new housing towers that ALLEGEDLY don't even have plumbing, ventilation, or electrical systems installed because the contractors are ALLEGEDLY in it for pure graft and nothing more, but how can I take anything at face value anymore?

That’s the thing about a command economy: sometimes you can command it to do the wrong thing.

Great.

I'm sure they'll cut costs by lowering quality. Might be tough to do, but they'll manage to find a way. Maybe they'll move towards using more cardboard and wet noodles.