QUESTION: Martin,
Thanks for a great report on your private blog regarding population and cycles. These Great Reset people are killing the whole world!
As an American who has lived in China since 1996, and has followed you since your incarceration, I am a huge believer in cycles and a student of Asian philosophy and martial arts.
I am however having problems reconciling your prediction of the center of Finance moving to China with what I am currently seeing. Please tell me what I am overlooking. Yes, I understand that the west is going to decline compared to its current state while China rises but there still needs to be certain structures in place.
To get the power to shift to a different country you need:
- Stability (China has this)
- Innovation; “the parent of prosperity” ( Money tends to follow innovation and this requires an environment where people are free to tinker and the government does not overly tax or try to assume too much control) It’s a bottom-up process that has not been part of China since the Song Dynasty. So if they are returning to the Innovative Song dynasty they need to rule like the Song did. China has been going away from this since Xi came to power. Locking up its entrepreneurs or stealing their innovations and giving them to their National Champions. If this idea of National Champions had happened in the US we would still be using rotary dialed phones and driving Edsels!
- Rule of Law:
i. Bankruptcy China asked AmCham and other chambers to help to rewrite its bankruptcy law to enable capital to be quickly redeployed. I have helped to take a few companies through bankruptcy and they still have a very long way to go before capital can be efficiently redeployed.
ii. Contracts are enforced by the Chinese government on foreign companies but there is no practical way to enforce them on the government. - Markets
i. Credit markets The markets are not open to the public
ii. Capital Markets. For every sin, that we read about on Wall Street my contacts inform me that China is two to three times worse. Ponzi and Madoff are alive and well in China. - FX and convertibility of the Chinese Yuan (The capital account is currently not open to the capital markets)
What am I missing?
Thanks in advance to you and your team for addressing this issue.
JB
ANSWER: This is not a personal forecast. But keep in mind that the timeframe is post-2032, which will actually be after 2037. So a lot can change between now and then and Xi Jinping will be 84 in 2037. The most critical factor is the rule of law. If that is not definitive, you cannot write any contract because there is no way to enforce it. The culture of copyright infringement was prevalent in Hong Kong where people would come visit offices with knock-off Rolex watches to Gucci bags. A lot needs to change, but the decline from the West is critical. What we are witnessing with this Great Reset is the desperate attempt to keep the governments in power which will only lead to fragmentation. So China simply will become #1 because the West will break apart.
The tyranny of this Triumvirate is to rule the world from the United Nations. China will not surrender to this absurd tyranny. But in the process, they will indeed destroy the very consumer-based economy that was so critical to world peace. Neither China nor Russia will surrender to this tyranny.
Moreover, China moving to a digital currency is also to bypass SWIFT. They will create their own financial network that in the years ahead will be an alternative to the West rather than subordinate to the West. China is well aware that the core of the US economy is the consumer market. They are intent on developing that and this is how they surpass the USA as it stupidly allows the Triumvirate to destroy the foundation of the Western economy. They will surpass the USA in e-commerce.
