Why doesn't the China bubble pop? A conversation with Bloomberg’s chief economist, Tom Orlik
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2020
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Bloomberg’s chief economist, Tom Orlik, about his new book, China: The Bubble That Never Pops. A longtime resident of Beijing, Tom wrote for the Wall Street Journal before joining Bloomberg as chief Asia economist. His book argues that Beijing's leaders have learned valuable lessons from their own history and from the experiences of other countries, and applied them well to China's own economy.
5:33: The bears have it wrong on China
10:08: Debt obligations and local government finance
18:29: What the Chinese leadership has learned, and what it hasn’t
30:21: Shadow loans, and the shadow banking sector
47:42: The tools that China’s central banks have to deal with risk
Recommendations:
Tom: China’s Unfinished Economic Revolution, by Nicholas R. Lardy, and The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days, by Cáo Xuěqín 曹雪芹, translated by David Hawkes.
Kaiser: The 2010 Chinese television series Three Kingdoms.
This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the cynical podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:14.6 | SubChina is the best way to keep on top of all the important news coming out of China through our daily access newsletter or check on our |
| 0:21.3 | website for our growing range of stories, videos, and podcasts. |
| 0:25.2 | It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. |
| 0:31.6 | I'm Kaiser Guo, and I'm coming to you today from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. |
| 0:36.0 | Jeremy Goldcorn is busy today with some club he belongs to. |
| 0:39.1 | He said something about a new cue drop or an awakening, a coming storm. |
| 0:43.8 | I think it had to do with some recovery group he's in, maybe Kulud's anonymous. |
| 0:48.1 | I don't know what the Q stands for. |
| 0:49.5 | Anyway, he says his apologies and wanted me to say, where we go one, we go all, whatever that's supposed to mean. |
| 0:56.9 | Well, we wish him well. |
| 0:59.8 | It has been, what, nearly 20 years now since the publication of the coming collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang. |
| 1:07.3 | Not the good Gordon Chang, who we had on the show a few weeks ago, Gordon H. Chang, but, |
| 1:11.6 | you know, the other one. His prediction of economic catastrophe and political upheaval was, by |
| 1:18.6 | no means, the only one published in the last two decades. It's only the best known, and the bears |
| 1:23.8 | actually are quite numerous. The fatal flaws in the Chinese economy that they identify and emphasize range very widely |
| 1:31.2 | and they're often interrelated, you know, in insoluble demographic trajectory, massive |
| 1:37.2 | capacity, unsustainable local debt, or some combination thereof. |
| 1:41.3 | And yet, somehow, time after time, China's economy defies the expectations |
| 1:46.1 | of many of the naysayers. Now, thanks to today's guest, you can read a book that will tell you |
| 1:51.8 | how China does it, or has done it so far anyway, what challenges it still continues to face, |
| 1:56.4 | and a lot more. The book is called China, The Bubble That Never Pops, and it's by Tom Orlik. |
... |
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