Pepe Escobar — Finally! China's Xi Is Launching a 'Painful Restructuring' of Insane Debt Levels

Power is completely centralized in one man - Xi, and he is finally addressing China's out-of-control leverage. It may be a bumpy ride.

This problem is coupled with endemic corruption and excessive bureaucracy. A lot of that debt was siphoned off. Now President Xi apparently feels that power is now consolidated enough in his hands to clean house. It ain't gonna be pretty, but China will come out a lot stronger and more streamlined if he is successful.

This is very difficult. It affects many countries. Russia is a good example. Putin was complaining of it when he first took office and he is still complaining about. The West attributed magical powers to Putin but that is not the case. This problem goes back to Tsarist Russia and even the Tsars could not get a handle on it. The same can be said for China.

China was actually doing fairly well after the revolution. It was the Nationalist government (Kuomintang or KMT) under Chang Kai-shek and his wife Madame Chang (Meiling Soong), known as the Dragon Lady, that was nororiously corrupt. In fact, some argue that this was the reason that Chang lost to Mao even though Chang's forces outnumbered Mao's.

There is just about nowhere that government is not corrupt to some degree. As Bill Black has documented, debt is a prime tool in criminal extraction in addition to rent extraction.

President Xi will have to rise to the level of Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables.

Russia Insider
Finally! China's Xi Is Launching a 'Painful Restructuring' of Insane Debt Levels

Pepe Escobar