In this week’s Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss how the coronavirus may prove to be the match that ignites a nationwide social revolt in China.
Beneath its facade as a rising superpower, the social contract within China has been deteriorating. And now with the covid-19 virus dealing a one-two punch of a public health crisis and an economic crisis, the populace may be nearing a breaking point.
They have traded freedom and fair treatment in exchange for an ever-rising lifestyle. But now that the government can no longer guarantee continued prosperity, and may be responsible for thousands (or more?) deaths by initially denying the coronavirus crisis existed, will people remain tolerant of its authoritarianism?
Charles isn’t sure they will. He sees good potential for social revolt:
The Chinese, unlike all the Western developed nations and South Korea and Japan, are only into their boom phase here by a generation and a half. The last major sort of social or political crisis in China was 1989, the Tiananmen Square revolt. They had a tiny spot of bother economically with the Asian contagion period in the late 90s, but that was mostly just a bump in the road.
So they’ve had smooth sailing for about 30 years. It has all been onward and upward, and that has given the Chinese extraordinarily high expectations. In other words, they haven’t had any downturns, any defeats, any reversals.
And so there’s a lot of people who were born after 1985 or so that have no memory of anything but onward and upward — a practically geometric ascent of everybody getting richer, and everything getting better.
by charleshughsmith 
