Yup… and just after they are done setting up their manufacturing plant or tech hub, they will act all surprised (surprised-pikachu.jpg) when some made up excuse are fabricated to shake down their newly minted “investment” just like Several foreign businesses have been raided by the authorities. and cry how could this possibly have happened, all offended, while demanding for a bailout or a loss carryover of their future taxes.

Then there is the multitude of spying and theft: Allegations of intellectual property theft by China or through their Thousand Talents Program by offering high salaries, privileges and rewards to the chinese diaspora in various countries to bring back sensitive documents, blueprints, diagrams, formulas, and manufacturing-related proprietary data before leaving their previous workplace.

Unfortunately, China is at the crossroad of multiple extraordinary challenges it had been delaying, exacerbating or skipping for the last few decades :

• demographic collapse, whereas population over 65 will increase from 200 million today to 400 million by 2049, while the overall population will decline slightly caused by the one-child policy since 1979 but also the high cost of raising a child in China to be successful

• hundreds of entire cities of unproductive tofu dreg construction and litany of unfinished projects (roads, bridges and train lines to factories, airports and houses) causing huge insolvent debt among Chinese property developers, all amounting to a beleaguered US$55 trillion property sector, which accounts for between 22% and 29% of the Chinese economy

• numerous environmental challenges that have only accelerated, including air and water pollution, deforestation, and dealing with increasing local natural disasters (flashfloods, heatwaves, heat domes, droughts, soil erosion, desertification, typhoons, etc…) due to Climate Change

• feeding 22% of the world population with 7% (and decreasing) of their global arable land

• youth-unemployment crisis whereas millions of well-educated graduates (21,3% of jobseekers between the ages of 16 and 25) are struggling to find decent white-collar jobs in urban areas

• prevalence of corruption, nepotism, grift and extortion by every level of governance and institutions (local, city, regional, medical, education, police, etc…)

All of the above while an ongoing China-U.S. trade war.

Hence, my doubt on foreign investor’s (voluntary, well informed and rational) return into a unfriendly and drastically changed Chinese economy.

I hope I am wrong and I absolutely wish for the best for China and the everyday peoples of China currently struggling to eke out a living due a series of unfortunate natural and/or preventable human caused disasters, all amplified by a leadership prioritising ideology over effective governance, or control over pragmatism.