This Is Why The China Bubble Never Seems To Pop
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For years and years, the Chinese economy has been characterized as a bubble, with too much debt, and a history of badly thought out, state-directed investment. Yet, for all of the dire warnings, the economy has continued to grow, and there hasn’t been a reckoning. So why is this? Is it only a matter of time before things all fall apart? Such questions are even more urgent in the wake of the COVID crisis, and questions the stability of the Chinese growth model during a time of weakened demand for Chinese-made goods. On this week’s episode, we speak with Tom Orlik, the Chief Economist at Bloomberg, and the author of the new book "China: The Bubble That Never Pops." He explains China’s resilience, and what could ultimately come back to haunt the Chinese economy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Join us in New York on November 29th for the Bloomberg Canadian Finance Conference, |
| 0:04.6 | proudly sponsored by National Bank of Canada Financial Markets. |
| 0:07.8 | 2023 marks the 11 year anniversary of our Canada focused event and continues the tradition of providing timely |
| 0:13.8 | insights and actionable strategies. We'll have senior government |
| 0:17.1 | officials from Saskatchewan, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario as well |
| 0:21.9 | as speakers from Northland Power, World Bank, Transolta, and many more. |
| 0:26.0 | Register at Bloomberg Live.com slash Canadian Finance slash radio. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Joe Wiesenthal. |
| 0:46.8 | And I'm Tracy Alaway. |
| 0:48.0 | Tracy, there's been some interesting data out of China lately regarding the recovery from the coronavirus crisis. |
| 0:57.0 | You're going to have to narrow that down quite a bit. |
| 1:00.0 | Are you talking about some of the data that sort of supports the notion that they're seeing |
| 1:06.1 | something of a recovery, although it's mostly driven on the supply side rather than the demand side? |
| 1:12.0 | Is that what you're talking about? |
| 1:13.0 | Yeah, sorry, I was being super cryptic, but yes, this idea that we have seen this sort of what some people might characterize as kind of a V-shaped recovery on the industrial side, sort of an impressively fast and |
| 1:26.3 | resilient restart of the factories and so forth, but not so much on the demand side yet, at least from the data and maybe you have a better sense of this from the Hong Kong perspective, but it still seems like consumption, shopping, going out to eat, they'll kind of tame. |
| 1:43.8 | Yeah, I think that's exactly right. |
| 1:45.3 | Although I have to say in Hong Kong, |
| 1:46.8 | we are starting to see a little bit of a pickup, |
| 1:49.4 | mostly because everyone is stuck in the city. |
| 1:52.4 | They can't actually leave. |
| 1:54.3 | When they have to come back, they have to go into two weeks |
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