| by michael roberts |
The debt problems afflicting China’s real estate market deepened this week after another property developer defaulted on its bonds and the world’s most heavily indebted property group Evergrande extended a suspension of its shares into a second day without explanation. Fantasia Holdings, a mid-sized developer, that just weeks ago assured investors it had “no liquidity issue”, said in a stock exchange filing that it “did not make the payment” on Monday of a $206m bond maturing that day, triggering a formal default. The default adds to fears that a crisis at Evergrande will spread to include more of China’s property developers, which account for a large portion of the Asian high-yield bond market.
Author: Brian Berletic
The US and its allies continue beating the drums of war in regards to China, but how serious is this? Will it really lead to war, or is it merely posturing meant to give the US the most favorable position on the other side of a fully ascendant China?
US President Joe Biden at Quad Summit, White House, Sept. 24, 2021. Seated clockwise Australian PM Scott Morrison, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese PM Yoshihide Suga & Indian PM Narendra ModiBy coincidence, perhaps, on the same day that President Biden hosted the first Quad summit, he also cleared the way for a senior executive of Huawei Technologies to return to Beijing — “removing one major irritant between the two superpowers,” as the New York Times put it.
The AUKUS deal allowed Australia to cancel an order for diesel driven submarines from France by taking up a U.S. and British offer to eventually acquire nuclear driven submarines.
It is not clear at all that Australia will find the money to actually pay for nuclear submarines. These are 50-100% more expensive that conventional ones. Australia also wants to make sure that at least 60% of the price flows back to Australian manufacturing. But there are no companies in Australia who have experience with work on nuclear technology. It is also unlikely that the U.S. or UK would let Australia gain such capacity.
French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and US President Joe Biden enjoy a light moment at the G7, Cornwall, UK, June 12, 2021The diplomatic fallout from the new security agreement between the Australia, United Kingdom and the United States [AUKUS] is just about beginning. The debris will take time to clean up. Might there be some lasting damage?
China’s Evergrande Group is the second largest property developer in China and it is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Evergrande has hired ‘restructuring advisers’ and warned that its liquidity is under “tremendous pressure” from collapsing sales, facing protests by home buyers and retail investors. Based in Shenzhen in southern China, Evergrande is saddled with almost Rmb2tn of total liabilities or over $300bn.
Exactly one month after the fall of Kabul and the disgraceful withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the United States has come into the world limelight with the Aukus Pact, an alliance that takes the initials of the names of the three signatory countries (Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom), with which it intends to “contain” Chinese expansion. The confrontation with the Asian giant is a way for the United States to demonstrate that withdrawal from Afghanistan does not mean a retreat in international affairs. When Kabul fell into the hands of the Taliban, the whole world questioned Washington’s credibility and, above all, its ability to guarantee security.
It’s no secret that the Chinese government harbors dreams of achieving a digital governance revolution. Over the past decade, authorities have steadily digitized many public-facing government services in a bid to both reduce bureaucratic costs and improve relations between government officials and citizens.
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WUHAN, CHINA — While many people have already criticized the lack of evidence and scientific basis for the hypothesis that the Covid-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory, both critics and proponents of the lab-leak theory appear to have uncritically accepted false or unproven premises regarding work done at the laboratory most often implicated in these speculations, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
Faced with the shift towards a multi-polar world, one where China is increasingly enabled to act as a benevolent facilitator of Global South economic development and international peace, the U.S. empire is seeking to sabotage the game of geopolitics. To throw ever more parts of the globe into anarchy, or at least a state of crisis, so that there isn’t a stable globe for the new multi-polar order to develop within.
Back in May the Chinese government set up a special zone to implement ‘common prosperity’ in Zhejiang province, which also happens to be the location of the headquarters of several prominent internet corporations– Alibaba among them. And last month, China’s President Xi Jinping announced plans to spread “common prosperity”, heralding a tough crackdown on wealthy elites – including China’s burgeoning group of technology billionaires. At its August meeting, the Central Finance and Economics Committee, chaired by Xi, confirmed that “Common Prosperity” was “an essential requirement of socialism” and should go together with high quality growth.
