Hidden Forces

In Episode 65 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with China expert Dinny McMahon, who spent ten years as a financial journalist in China, including six years in Beijing at The Wall Street Journal and four years with Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai. Demetri and Dinny discuss how Chinese malinvestment, massive debt burdens, and a population that is aging faster than anywhere else in the world has created the conditions for the worst economic and political crisis in modern history. It has often been argued that the Chinese economic model may offer the best prototype for how humans should organize politically, in the 21st century. For Westerners, it’s difficult to appreciate the scope of China’s development, and this is because of the way in which the country allocates capital and generates credit.    Unlike western economies, which are built around liberal, democratic norms of free-market capitalism, China’s economy operates more like a one-billion person, multinational conglomerate. This model has allowed