Or perhaps the end of the beginning, if you're a little more pessimistic.
Image is from this Bloomberg article, from which I also gathered some of the information used in the preamble.
While Trump was off in the Middle East in an incompetent attempt to solve a geopolitical and humanitarian crisis, China has been doing something much more productive.
Chinese officials, including Xi Jinping, had a summit with CELAC (a community of 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries). There, he promised investment, various declarations of friendship, and visa-free entry for 30 days for citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. Lula signed over 30 agreements with China. Colombia is joining the New Development Bank and hopes to gain the money for a 120-kilometer railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as an alternative route to the Panama Canal. Even Argentina, ruled by arch-libertarian and arch-dipshit (but I repeat myself) Milei, was uncharacteristically polite with China as he secured a currency swap renewal to shore up their international reserves.
It wouldn't really be correct to say that Latin America is "siding with China over the US" - leaders in the region will continue to make many deals with America for the foreseeable future, and even Trump's bizarre economic strongman routine won't make them break off economic and diplomatic relations. What's significant here is that despite increasing American pressure for those leaders to break off all ties with China, few appear to be listening - and given that China is perhaps the most important economy on the planet right now, that is a very predictable outcome.
As the current American empire takes actions to try and avoid their doom, those very actions only guarantee it. As Latin America grows ever more interconnected with China and continues to develop, America will grow ever more panicked and demanding, and this feedback loop will - eventually - result in the death of the Monroe Doctrine.
Last week's thread is here. The Imperialism Reading Group is here.
Please check out the RedAtlas!
The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
So with China apparently experiencing the greatest surge in household consumption the world has ever seen over the last 1-2 decades and being the biggest consumer market in the world for most goods, already outperforming in per capita sales of goods any other remotely comperable in income level country, how much faster should consumption be growing for China to solve all those oh so terminal weak consumption problems? Should consumption have been growning at double the rate of gdp somehow? Should they, on a per capita basis, already be consuming near level of the average american somehow instead of idk 60% as much? Should they be eating more , buying more cars and smartphones? They are already the largest market by far of just about any product (cars, phones, appliances, furniture, luxury etc) so should they be that by multipliers of 2-3 or 5 already?
Or should they aspire to spend similar amount of money on rent and healthcare on average to catch up ?After all Chinese household consumption numbers usualy come in at levels similar to retail sales, while household consumption in the US is ~2-3x retail sales. Thats because not only ar services (largely rent, healthcare and education) a much larger burden for the american and western consumer but they are also (mis)calculated completely differenty in the chinese national accounting system which is still of leninist origin leading to these numbers above been undercounts funnily enough for china, as are ultimetaly the usualy circulated very low numbers of consumption as a % of GDP. For that and other factors uniqe to China, apples-to-apples, China’s household consumption share is probably 50-55% of GDP, only a bit lower than world average.
Even so ,Is the CPC neoliberaly holding down Chinese household consumption by having it grow only 2+ times as fast as any other country over the years instead of uhhh 4 times ? Where should and would those numbers in those graphs be if not for the missmanagement of Chinas consumer economy by the CPC? At 300% ? At what level should and chinese HH consumption be for it to become a "consumer country" or whatever ?
We’ve been through this before, none of this means anything without taking into account the role of debt.
Household debt leverage of US vs China vs Japan (debt to disposable income ratio)
US = purple, China = red, Japan = brown
Notice that China’s household debt leverage had exceeded that of US and Japan around 2018-2019. It matches perfectly with the charts you’re showing there, which used the change from 2008 as the starting point.
So, there is nothing unusual about China’s increasing consumption when people can afford to take on more debt i.e. when the economy is good. However, with exports being stifled by potential tariffs, when over-investments in property market imploding, with local governments saddled with unprecedented debt, it becomes inevitable that consumption becomes the only channel for where the economy must flow (if you’ve been reading anything I’ve written before, you know the drill).
The government knows this, that’s why for the first time, they have been prioritizing consumption as a national priority, and many subsidies have been given out to promote consumption.
However, as can be seen from the latest CPI data, we’re still having deflation:
So, the question is: how can we have deflation if consumption is indeed, as you said, been rising? It doesn’t even pass the smell test.
And we all know that a deflationary spiral is bad - much worse than inflation, and why the government is doing all it can to try to promote consumption.
Furthermore, unemployment has gone up - especially youth unemployment (see below).
Urban unemployment as of March 2025:
Compare March 2025 with December 2024:
Total unemployment: 5.2% <- 5.1%
Age 15-24 (non-students): 16.5% <- 15.7%
Age 25-29 (non-students): 7.2% <- 6.6%
Age 30-59 (non-students): 4.1% <- 3.9%
Once again, the growth in the economy, if true, does not match the unemployment data.
As I have said before, China cannot subsidize its way out of the consumption problem. Because the real problem - the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address - is wealth inequality.
When trade revenues are good, when investments in property and stock markets are booming, one can easily paper over the wealth inequality problem, because everyone seems to be getting wealthier, we have millions and millions of people being lifted out of poverty.
But now that exports and investment can no longer sustain economic growth, and when consumption has to take up the role of economic driver, all the ills of wealth inequality now begin to manifest themselves.
How do Chinese households borrow to consume if both their savings growth, their income growth and the consumption growth have been onsistently larger than HH debt growth at every single quarter over the years. HH debt can also be a bunch of things not related to most aspects of consumption so unless we have some ready to go data we cant know where that debt went and its a huge leap to call China's consumption growth "debt fueled". Like HH have to borrow to be able consume but also HH savings are at the same time growing faster and higher than HH debt ? They get in debt to be able to sustain their consumption but also they are able save up more than the debt they get into ? Bank Deposits and savings are above bank lending for years and years. Doesnt pass the smell test.You are either in the red or the black. Either household save too much and don’t spend enough or they’re underwater and struggling with debt. Those are mutually exclusive conditions and its obvious towards what side chinese HHs fall.
The debt figures you posted are ultimately a function of the nominal aggregated debt figure and tell us absolutely nothing about how distressed the average household balance sheet is and if and for what reason they have debt and if that debt is used for everyday consumption (its not), especially given the income and regional inequalities in China in the last decade, and the economic activity of different groups. To begin with the majority of that debt increase is housing mortgages, chinese HHs of course arent getting into debt to consume everyday goods thats ridiculous , and as such to make any claim about the average chinese household being distressed or struggling with debt from that angle you have to find data about the % of chinese HH exposed fo mortgages, on what terms these are and how and when their monthly /annual payments are made and how they compare to their income, savings etc. I have seen no data points that indicate that the average chinese household actualy struggles with mortgages and mortgage payments, putting them in the red or curtailing consumption in any significant way.
As Its much more likely that upper middle class housholds and individuals leveraged too much on the property market and speculation (irregardless of their returns) and on the average household level i would imagine most debt figures have accumulated from the explosion of car purchases, housing and payments that foundementaly add a bunch to HH debt calculation no matter how healthy peoples balance sheet is. So Its less of an issue if HH debt going up mostly as a function of mortgage penetration for higher income earners but not coming at the expense of savings or consumption (but also not financing those things) for the average houshold. So most of the "houshold debt" data behind the graph becomes irrelevant to the discussion. Bottom line is that no, chinese households arent going into debt to consume things by any margin so all of the questions i layed out remain
Regarding overall deflation of course China wants it to be at like 1% instead of -0.2% to 0.2 or whatever. But it would be an issue if and when the main deflationary trends in China stop being Real estate, Cars (EVs in particular) and some food items that historicaly have cyclical inflation and deflation trends. And until there is some actual sustained deflation across sectors and goods. We know about the real estate issues so this isnt news and deflation wise it has been pretty predictable for the past year. But the other two arent caused or combined with weakened demand, the opposite really.
Deflation in sectors or products that are caused by increased supply , productivity, competition or cheaper and more abundant imputs (labour, emergy or indermediate goods like oil) isnt really connected to any deflationary spiral or crises. Especially when consuption and sales in said products or sectors improve or remain high. Auto prices are falling in China due to rising productivity, cheap as shit imputs and vertical intergration and ferocious competition among automakers and also are combined with very healthy and increased sales and demand, and that’s a good thing.Ultimately data shows most of the deflation outside of property is being supply driven and not from demand collapse
They have been running this extremely low deflationary - zero inflation economy for years now. If this were a spiral dynamic we would be seeing massive production curtailment already and neither aggregate wage or consumption data would be showing growth. The level of impact for a spiral can’t be masked. Deflationary spirals are not slow moving phenomena because their fundamental mechanism is via a liquidity shock. A year should be more than enough to rule out any deflationary spiral happening
This is just plain wrong:
The last time China had a deflation was during the mid-1990s economic crisis (overproduction crisis) that followed a very high CPI where tens of millions of people lost their jobs. Since joining the WTO and opening up its market to the world, China has been steadily maintaining its CPI at ~2% until the post-Zero Covid opening i.e. the last two years.
No offense, you write long paragraphs and I enjoy reading them and like discussing them with you, but a lot of those do not correspond to reality.