The Macroeconomics of Chinese kleptocracy
by John Hempton
China is a kleptocracy of a scale never seen before in human history. This post aims to explain how this wave of theft is financed, what makes it sustainable and what will make it fail. There are several China experts I have chatted with – and many of the ideas are not original. The synthesis however is mine. Some sources do not want to be quoted.
The macroeconomic effects of the Chinese kleptocracy and the massive fixed-currency crisis in Europe are the dominant macroeconomic drivers of the global economy. As I am trying a comprehensive explanation for much of the world's economy in less that two thousand words I expect some kick-back.
China is a kleptocracy. Get used to it.
I start this analysis with China being a kleptocracy – a country ruled by thieves. That is a bold assertion – but I am going to have to assert it. People I know deep in the weeds (that is people who have to deal with the PRC and the children of the PRC elite) accept it. My personal experience is more limited but includes the following:
(a). The children and relatives of CPC Central Committee members are amongst the beneficiaries of the wave of stock fraud in the US,
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http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/06/macroeconomics-of-chinese-kleptocracy.html
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This may be a strange way of looking at what's going inside China, but here goes.
Many years ago, I signed up for one of these online matchmaking services, and I specified China as a country of interest. For a long, LONG time, nothing; nothing at all out of China. Of course, Ukraine, but that's limited almost exclusively to scammers, and naturally, the occasional e-mail from a Nigerian princess. 
Now, however, I'm getting e-mails daily from China, from women, seeking "immediate marriage", and I must emphasize those two words. In full disclosure, yes I'm an American. The last time I was in China, as an English teacher, was back in 2006, and their economy was cheerfully roaring along.
But now, starting I'd say about three months ago, these daily e-mails began popping up in my inbox, and not from any one region in China, but throughout the country as a whole.
Granted, this may be little more than an anomaly, and it is purely 100% anecdotal, yet it is interesting. Most of the women e-mailing me are what would be defined as "middle-class" by Chinese standards, typically office workers (or so they claim). A brief edit; I went back and checked under the "occupation" listing of those who've been writing to me.......90% (nine out of ten) are under a heading of 'Administration/Finance Sector'.
After having read the original article, I'm beginning to wonder if something is afoot in China, and these women writing to me are seeking an escape mechanism from China by marriage to a non-Chinese. Are they seeing some kind of handwriting on the wall? That perhaps the Chinese economy's growth, and attendant social growth/stability is about to come to an abrupt and dramatic end?
For full disclosure, I have no intention whatsoever of importing for myself a "mail-order bride". I simply signed up in the event that I returned to China one day.
