Domestically, the Chinese government is cracking down on the “three burdens” of modern middle class Chinese citizens: (1) Education costs (2) Healthcare costs (3) Real estate + pushing for stability in media and finance
Cathy Guo
The murmurs I’ve heard from tech + political circles within China in the past week has just been incredible.
China’s recent moves may be the most important global macro trend in the medium term for the whole world. Some of my thoughts below
THREAD ⬇️
2/ Domestically, the Chinese government is cracking down on the “three burdens” of modern middle class Chinese citizens:
(1) Education costs
(2) Healthcare costs
(3) Real estate
+ pushing for stability in media and finance
4/ Cutting cost burdens & predatory practices for consumers at the expense of billionaire founders & VCs signals massive acceleration of a key part of China’s (meticulous) 5 year plan:
Protect & uplift the communal base. Even if it dramatically punishes capitalists and capital
5/ Keep in mind, CCP support is *99%* positive in China. Crackdown looks scary to us in tech but the populace is (for obvious reasons) glad for reform
The scarier part is leg 2 to domestic reform:
(1) More overt challenges to US hegemony
(2) Xi’s place in history as King
6/ This is purely anecdotal – and perhaps a biased sample (I’m mostly in touch with expat returnees in China who are less supportive of CCP generally) but I’ve heard WAY more murmurs about indirect confrontation with US – Taiwan reclamation – etc than ever before
8/ What’s clear is this: the laissez-faire days are over. The “open economy China” trajectory from 1978 is now in RAPID swing back to a much more central planning driven, state control model even in previously seemingly untouchable industries (eg tech)
9/ What happens domestically is something the (broad) Chinese populace seems to accept and will need to reckon with
What happens on the global arena to satisfy the Party’s goal to accelerate securing a #1 position vs US or Xi’s truly limitless ambitions could affect us all
