Book Title: Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy Author: Anne Stevenson Yang Headline: Central Government Seeks Control Amid Economic Booms and Crises After the economy grew "out of control" in the 1980s, the centra
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 8 September 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
After the economy grew "out of control" in the 1980s, the central government, fearing a Soviet-style breakup, implemented "golden projects" for control over customs, taxes, and information. Following the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, China recapitalized its banks by creating four asset management companies to buy bad assets, effectively injecting massive cash into the economy. This unleashed an explosion of wealth, shifting the Chinese people's aspirations toward getting rich.
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| 0:30.8 | This is CBSI and the world. I'm John Batchel. The Chinese Miracle. The book is Wild Ride, a short history of the opening and closing of the Chinese economy. First, the opening part, there's been a international banking crisis, |
| 0:41.5 | and the way that the Beijing Chinese Communist Party responds to it, as Anne says, in their |
| 0:48.3 | tasseled loafers, is to host cash on the population. |
| 0:52.8 | And that creates opportunities. The opportunities, however, |
| 0:56.9 | look like the creation of a golem monster. This is Anne's vision, Anne's metaphor. It works. |
| 1:05.0 | But what we have is a change of opinion of the Chinese people, longer as Anne writes or do you want a home |
| 1:13.7 | and a car and access to cigarettes which at one point were understood to be keeping your lungs |
| 1:20.0 | healthy but you want to be rich you want to grab the brass ring was this going on all across |
| 1:25.9 | the country or just the coastal cities, the big cities |
| 1:29.0 | had? I think everybody had this idea that they could grab some of this cash that was |
| 1:35.3 | raining down on China. Everybody heard about the companies that were listing on international |
| 1:40.7 | markets and all of the private investment. |
| 1:45.1 | And so people wanted to, you know, people in the, in the countryside, moved to the cities. |
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