A weekend topic starting with China Worker. "The following is a document discussed at the 2015 congress of the ISA’s China, Hong Kong and Taiwan section. This appeared in our book Building the Socialist Alternative (published by chinaworker.info November 2015, 94 pages, available here) but has never previously been available online. While certain details and statistical information have receded in importance, or even in some cases been disproved by subsequent events, the general outline presented in this document from six years ago has been vindicated."

"The bursting of China’s massive investment bubble and the sharp drop in internal demand, threaten to enormously complicate and even derail the radical reform programme or ‘economic transition’ that Xi Jinping and his government is committed to. This has been likened to performing a ‘heart transplant’ on China’s economy. Xi’s reform agenda is fundamentally identical to the neo-liberal ‘structural adjustment’ measures associated with the IMF and World Bank. These institutions have also been closely involved as advisors to the Chinese regime over economic policy."

"So, what is the driving force behind Xi’s ‘transition’ agenda? Certainly it is not a question of ideology, no matter how readily government spokesmen mouth neo-liberal jargon. China’s leaders are ‘pragmatic’ to a fault, but in their struggle to stay in power they are driven by merciless economic pressure – the pressure of a debt time bomb that unless defused raises the spectre of financial collapse with revolutionary upheavals as a result."

"The capitalist class globally fears that China, the biggest and most decisive emerging market, is being sucked into this malaise. Despite their upbeat speeches this fear is shared by China’s leaders. Reflecting the interdependence of the global economy, the US Federal Reserve postponed its long-planned interest rate increase in September 2015. Yellen, the Fed’s chairman, mentioned 'China' six times and 'global' ten times at her press conference to explain the decision."

"The truth is that China’s unfolding crisis and the crisis of global capitalism are inextricably linked and it is impossible to fully understand them if we view them separately. China’s current predicament is a result of the global crisis in 2008 and the measures Beijing took to try to escape that crisis. The world economy has not come close to full recovery mode and has instead become dependent upon extraordinary ‘life support’ measures (‘quantitative easing’ and money printing on a scale never before seen) in order to achieve lacklustre growth."

From Taiwan News. "Following the arrest of five senior staff at Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, Hong Kong Secretary of Security John Lee (李家超) has threatened those who maintain contact with the five with a 'hefty price.' Speaking at a press conference Thursday, Lee told those assembled, 'Don’t associate with these criminals endangering national security, you will pay a hefty price… cut ties with these criminals before it’s too late to repent,' according to the Hong Kong Free Press."

"While police blocked exits and rummaged through the computers and desks of journalists, those present were prevented from moving freely in the building, and some officers reportedly prevented photos from being taken. The cause for the arrests was the publication of 30 articles in both Chinese and English that called for the implementation of sanctions by foreign governments on either Hong Kong or China, Lee said. The security chief declined to answer reporters’ questions as to whether the paper's continued operations would constitute a crime, nor whether it would be illegal to share the paper’s articles or buy shares in Next Media, the parent company of Apple Daily."

"However, Lee did make a veiled threat against anyone who would share articles from Apple Daily and other pro-democracy publications, saying that while the motives of those who shared said content would, of course, be examined, it would be best not to 'draw suspicion to yourself, if it is not something you wish to spread,' per Hong Kong Free Press."

From News.com.au. "Australia’s economy is in a 'triple crisis,' prompting calls for a royal commission into the future of housing. The reason why? Because Australia’s property market is going so well. The report, titled ‘Housing: Taming the Elephant in the Economy’, interviewed a panel of 87 experts and has been a year in the making. Among its findings were that the number of homeowners under the age of 35 have halved since 1995, with most properties concentrated in the hands of 65-year-olds or older."

"According to the research, the home ownership is now out of reach for any Aussies under the age of 35. Australia is one of the most indebted developed countries, beating the US, UK and Canada. The inequality gap is widening as the housing market continues to surge."

The Globe and Mail in Canada. "A far-reaching report on how to improve housing supply in B.C.’s large urban areas includes a recommendation to get rid of the province’s homeowner grant, as well as a proposal to examine whether to end the countrywide capital-gains exemption on principal residences. Within hours, however, the report’s most contentious recommendations were rejected by the two governments that had paid for it."

"In a sign of what politicians see as an untouchable third rail in housing policy, B.C. Finance Minister Selina Robinson said less than an hour after the report was released on Thursday that her government is not contemplating any revision to the homeowner grant, which distributes almost a billion dollars of tax rebates to residential property owners."

"Liberal finance critic Mike Bernier said he was shocked by the report’s recommendations on that issue and the homeowner grant. 'There shouldn’t be a penalty to those fortunate enough to already be in the housing market.'"

From KGW in Oregon. "State lawmakers are considering whether to extend the state's eviction moratorium. This week, they outlined a proposal to protect renters from eviction for nonpayment for 60 more days, as long as they have applied for state rental assistance. 'There’s a lot of landlords out there who can’t afford that,' said Christian Bryant, president of the Portland Area Rental Owners Association. He says the last 15 months have already been tough for smaller landlords who were forced into foreclosure or had to sell property."

"'It’s unfair to put that bill on the landlords. If we’re going to provide a social service to help out a segment of the population, then we need to agree as a population to split that cost up among all of us,' said Bryant."

The Epoch Times on California. "As California’s population drops due to a mass exodus of residents escaping high taxes, exorbitant housing costs, and increasing homelessness, there’s another factor that’s been quietly contributing to the downturn: the declining birth rate. Data shows that while the Golden State’s population continues to grow old, young adults are having fewer kids."

"Frank Bean is a professor of sociology and the director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at the University of California–Irvine. He has some ideas on California’s falling birth rate. 'One thing I think is important is that 90 percent of the population in the United States is not making any more money than they did 20 years ago, 30 years ago,' Bean told The Epoch Times. 'Parents are making less once you can adjust for inflation. In other words, incomes have been stagnant or declining, especially for people at the bottom.'"

"'There’s lots more labor-saving devices and technological changes and so on, but in terms of how much money people make [and] how much they have to pay for housing, it’s much more difficult,' he added."

"John Moorlach, a former state senator and Orange County supervisor, said he likes to 'look for corollaries' when analyzing situations; in this case, by studying states that are also not growing, and how that has affected them over a 10 or 20 year period. 'Obviously, I’ve been to Michigan and I drove through Detroit. That’s awful. You know, when you see empty houses and boarded up factories … that’s not pretty,' he said, mentioning Illinois, New Jersey, and New York as other states that have seen large exoduses."

"He said that Gov. Gavin Newsom 'isn’t thinking recession' yet—but when it comes, 'it’s going to be really awful.' 'It’s gonna be worse than what Arnold Schwarzenegger faced when he showed up in it during the liquidity crisis,' he predicted."

The New York Post. "Commercial rents fell across Manhattan retail corridors in the past year, with one Soho stretch down a whopping 37 percent, according to the Real Estate Board of New York’s spring 2021 retail market report, which covers March through May, previewed by The Post. The retail rental market’s recovery depends on Manhattan office workers returning to their desks, the report said."

"Retail space in tourist and commuter neighborhoods took the biggest hits according to the report. 'There were really no tourists to speak of. And in the business areas, it was a ghost town,' Robin Abrams, vice chairman at Compass Inc., told The Post. She described the market as 'extremely challenged.'"

The American Thinker. "How's this for taking a leftist lemon and trying to make lemonade from it? Leftist columnists closely aligned with Democrats and their policies are now praising unaffordable home prices and the coming U.S. future as a renter nation. In a column titled 'America Should Become a Nation of Renters' Bloomberg's Karl W. Smith writes: 'Rising real-estate prices are stoking fears that homeownership, long considered a core component of the American dream, is slipping out of reach for low- and moderate-income Americans. That may be so — but a nation of renters is not something to fear. In fact, it's the opposite. This process is painful, but it's not all bad. Slowly but surely, most Americans' single biggest asset — their home — is becoming more liquid. Call it the liquefaction of the U.S. housing market.'"

"But there's even more, and now-left-leaning columnist Froma Harrop, in a piece titled 'The American dream can be rented,' tells us: 'As lockdowns sent city dwellers 'fleeing' to the suburbs for more space, the prices of homes offering that space took off. To play in the bidding wars, homebuyers had to cough up big money and chain themselves to giant mortgages. This painful scenario led many to choose renting over buying, and that's not a bad thing.'"

"'Why can't the American dream of a detached house with a family room be rented instead, like an apartment? Actually, it can. Houses have been available for rent forever, but now real estate investors are building entire subdivisions for the purpose of renting, not selling, the homes. For generations, the real estate industry has promoted a cult of homeownership, portraying it as a rite of passage for the upwardly mobile. Realtors pushed it. Lenders pushed it. Developers pushed it. And so did the government, with easy mortgages.'"

"At a recent party in May in Lake Elsinore, California for a friend who was moving to South Carolina, virtually everyone there was black, Mexican, or Asian, with many immigrants, and as property-owners, they said they had achieved their dream. Democrats can't stand people like this, the idea of people of all colors owning their own homes with garages full of expensive sporting equipment. It makes them sick, this idea of peons moving about the country and 'escaping all proper control,' as the Duke of Wellington put it, as noted by Eric Hoffer."

"Hernando de Soto, the great Peruvian economist, wrote about this Mystery of Capital and the importance of being able to have property rights as critical to eliminating the third-world shantytown life. Without property rights, which includes access to having property at all, life can get pretty rotten. Democrats are all in for this kind of rotten. It transfers human wealth and autonomy into money and power for themselves."