China’s turbocharged growth may have made it rich, but now it has to deal with rich country problems.
Read more World Tour 2: Building things and breaking things in China
High-speed trains that connect every town. Gleaming new bridges and skyscrapers. An apartment (or two) for every family. No country on Earth has seen the kind of economic growth that China has over the last 50 years. China has become the factory to the world, a grand experiment in central government planning mixed with personal ambition.
It was all enabled by what our guide for today calls, an engineering state, a central planning mindset where leaders believe they can engineer their way out of economic problems. And problems are mounting.
Read more Less oil, more soybeans, and car junk fees
Today on the show, the perils of prosperity and the despair of success as China deals with overbuilding.
We’ll travel back to China’s free-wheeling boom-era of the early 2000s and hang out with a property developer who amassed his wealth at the center of the action – private jet rides, thousand-dollar fish soup, casual bribes. Then, as the economy slows, we ask what can we learn from the despair of success. Does rising youth unemployment signal a less prosperous future? With young people struggling to find white-collar jobs, some of them are opting out of work altogether.
Read more Mystery bidder buys T. rex nicknamed ‘Gus’ for a record $50 million
Featured Episodes:
- China’s real estate crisis, explained (2023)
- Young, “spoiled and miserable” in China (2023)
Featured Terms:
- Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
- Engineering State
- Malinvestment
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