Chinese developer Fantasia fails to make debt payments

Mass default is in the air. Unable to even make "interest" payments on one's debt? In China, that's a sure sign that a) all your options have already been exhausted and b) the government is willing to see you go into restructuring, thereby defaulting on all those millions of promised, partly-paid-for homes (which means c) Joe and Jane Chinese get to learn from personal experience just exactly how severe certain "haircuts" can be!)

Nobody's talking about the nationwide Power Outages throughout China, either. More foreign factories moving offshore, with a lack of materials and even power for the remaining factories; unpaid workers living out this winter in their oft-unheated hi-rises, taking the stairs to one's 30th floor apartment when the elevators don't work, after one's work has been cancelled/pay has been cut, again, for the rest of the week...this is going to get much worse before it gets better.

You reap what you sow Mr Xi.

theres a reason why china is flying dozens of planes into taiwan's ADIZ, and the underlying cause is this article -- to divert domestic attention away from internal problems in china.

for decades the chinese people have put up with dubious govt policies, excessive control and lack of freedoms, as long as they get to make some money and live a relatively comfortable life. but when the chinese people start to lose their money, they arent going to take it lying down. wealth - possibly the most important type of face - is everything in china, and the people will realize that the govt was responsible for the collapse of their recent wealth.

The ratings agency added in a statement that although media reports said Fantasia missed an earlier payment to bondholders, the bond "does not appear to have been disclosed in the company's financial reports".

"We believe the existence of these bonds means that the company's liquidity situation could be tighter than we previously expected.

"Furthermore, this incident casts doubt on the transparency of the company's financial disclosures," Fitch added.

Re the second two paragraphs; Fitch are masters of understatement.

The snowball is rolling ........... Xi Jinping's juggling act added another sharp knife. When will he miss one and get poked? We live in interesting times.

Another company that could be called Dodgy Brothers Inc.

Xi and Boris are doing the same thing. It's not going so well in the UK and it might not go too well in China either.

In the UK, having been hammered by Covid lockdowns, the UK is now being hammered by Brexit, with shortages and rising costs. That loses Johnson all of the political and economic benefit he could have accrued from a fast vaccine roll out.

In China, following Covid, the debt-filled property bubble is starting to burst, yet Xi is depressing the economy and cracking down on multiple sectors and groups of people, from BTS fans to gamers.

Both are doing it for reasons of personal ideology. Boris is doing it for Juche - an impossible self-sufficiency. Xi is searching for pure Communism in a China that has tasted from the sweet well of capitalism.

A wise, pragmatic leader goes easy when times are bad. They do not double up on the grief their citizens are facing to pursue a political fantasy.