Chinese entrepreneurs suddenly jump to their deaths. Is this random or an indication of a failing Chinese economy?
Having worked in Hong Kong for nearly a decade, the story of the rise and fall of property management company Evergrande intrigued me. The fall of this once grand company was historic.
Back in August of 2023 I wrote:
The China economy is in trouble, like the rest of the world’s economies. The Evergrande failure has been in the works for some time now. Once one of the most prestigious firms in China, it’s now facing bankruptcy.
China’s Evergrande Files for Bankruptcy – World Economy in Dangerous Shape
Before that I was on the War Room with Steve Bannon to discuss the fall of the China economy and Evergrande in October of 2021:
If not coming, it’s already here, Steve. [Joe’s response to Steve Bannon’s question about a financial crisis coming to China.]…
The problem that China has is similar to 2008, it’s the same problem. They overbuilt real estate and they’re aren’t people in the real estate that can afford it and can live in it. So they have all this property, it’s a real estate crisis, all this property that is setting all over the place, all over the country, that has been built but there’s just nobody in it…
In January of 2024 Evergrande was in full default.
Evergrande was once China’s top real estate developer, but ever since it defaulted on loans in 2021 the company has been in a kind of slow-motion collapse. With more than $300 billion in debts and contractors who hadn’t been paid, there seemed to be no way for the company to recover.
The central problem at Evergrande (and other, similar developers) seems to be that it was using current deposits on as-yet-unbuilt apartments to cover the costs of building apartments it had already been paid for. That kind of ponzi scheme obviously doesn’t work when no one is willing to risk more money (placing an order for a future project) because the company has defaulted on a loan. Finally, today, a judge in Hong Kong called it a lost cause and ordered the company to dissolve so its assets could be sold.
But there’s a catch here and it’s a fairly huge one. The judge who ordered the liquidation is in Hong Kong. Most of the company’s assets are in mainland China. The way this is supposed to work is that a mainland judge is supposed to take up the order and make sure it gets carried out. But you’ll be shocked to learn that it doesn’t actually work that way in China very often.
All of that is a nice way of saying that the order to liquidate assets may dray on for years or may just be ignored. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine a worse outcome for China’s economy. The collapse of Evergrande is bad news but at least its dissolution is a familiar outcome to foreign investors who expect this to happen to failed companies. Also, it would allow some of them to recoup at least a portion of their losses.
But if politics intervenes and Evergrande’s mainland operation isn’t dissolved after a court order, suddenly investors realize how little confidence they can have in China, not to mention that won’t be getting any of their money back.
There is now more negative news on the Chinese economy.
According to the Epoch Times, top entrepreneurs from four different companies recently “committed suicide” as their companies were failing economically.
In the span of just four months, four prominent Chinese entrepreneurs from multiple industries have committed suicide, all reportedly jumping from buildings in desperate final acts. Experts say that these incidents stand in stark contrast to the Chinese regime’s official narrative of “better-than-expected” GDP growth for the first half of the year.
On April 16, Bi Guangjun, founder of Jindianzi Textiles Ltd, leapt from the 28th floor of a building. Insiders revealed that he invested heavily in China’s new energy industry but lost a fortune.On June 2, Liu Wenchao, chairman of Xizi Elevator Co. Ltd., a firm heavily reliant on China’s now-floundering property sector, died after falling from a building. Chinese state-controlled media said that Liu once said that anyone who has ambition ends up scarred.
On July 17, Zeng Yuzhou, founder of home renovation chain Liangjiaju Building Materials, jumped from a high-rise in Guangzhou. He left behind a 1 billion yuan ($140 million) mess, affecting over 2,000 families, more than 1,000 employees, and over 300 suppliers, according to Chinese media.
Just 10 days later, on July 27, Chinese media reported that the chairman of home retail giant Easyhome New Retail Group, Wang Linpeng, died after jumping off a building, only four days after being released from police custody. Wang had been held by authorities during an anti-corruption investigation.
Xiao Yi, a London-based Chinese finance professional with 30 years of experience in the industry and a China watcher, shared his analysis of the four deaths with the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times, where he is a regular contributor. Although the deaths occurred in different sectors, Xiao said he believes that it reveals common underlying pressures strangling China’s private sector, which includes collapsing cash flows, mounting debt, policy uncertainty, and the erosion of public trust.He noted that China’s ballooning local government debt has crowded out private-sector financing. While state media champion slogans like “supporting the real economy,” capital is disproportionately funneled to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), leaving private firms informally blacklisted from loans.
First it was real estate and now its companies. China’s economy is failing. It has been for a long time. President Trump’s actions to ensure fair trade with China may be the final blow. The only way China could compete was with unfair trade relations with the US. President Trump is putting an end to this.
Well, as I remember this happened long ago in Japan for that very reason so I’d have to say it’s a definite possibility.
Mʏ ʟᴀsᴛ ᴘᴀʏ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ᴡᴀs $8500 ᴡᴏʀᴋɪɴɢ 10 ʜᴏᴜʀs ᴀ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
Tʜɪs ɪs ᴡʜᴀt I ᴅᴏ……. https://tinyurl.com/w0rk34
Epidemic of definistration.
Isn’t Chinese Entrepreneur and oxymoron?
Four Chinese Entrepreneurs Recently were pushed to Their Deaths …..corrected it for you.
Has anyone seen Hillary lately?
I pray every day for the Chinese people the tremendous failure to warn the people they were opening the flood gates and washed away entire villages’. I pray that they will throw off the CCP and come back to God. Russia did, America is struggling to get back to the Spiritualty of our founding fathers’ I pray for Godly leadership…..amen
Oh so true!
I believe there are more christians in china than the US.
I think these CEOs were launched into space by CCP goons to prevent them from implicating the CCP in their failures. As I understand, there are about 100 cities in China that have been built, and no one lives in them. At least not yet. I think they exist to house refugees that would result from a massive attack by the US, in retaliation for a massive attack on the US.
The epic failure of Marxist central planning on full display for all the world to see.
After centuries of top down rulership the ruling famiies of China can’t even conceive of actual free market demand supply economics.
The naive children despot tyrant rulers of China thought they could just
“build it and they will come” with no understanding of or refusal to accept the built in efficiencies of capitalist open competition free market economics.
At the end of it all marxism is merely a regressive return to despot tyrant government pig kings and rightless serfdome slavery for the people
That is very well put. If we wished to argue about left/right and political systems, it’s not a bad idea to point out that more centralized political systems like communism and socialism focus power into fewer hands, and into “top down” processes. So, it more closely resembles the “right” as it meant during the French Revolution (the left sought rights for non-elites, where the right sought power for elites, the church, and nobility). So, yes, this is regressive return to tyrant government (run by elites), and appears to be the natural course for all socialist efforts (there are many flavors but they all end up the same failing way). The people of China are showing signs of trauma in many ways. This recent set of deaths is just a small part of the many cracks showing in China’s society.
They don’t exist as a result of an actual PLAN. They exist because of bad allocation of resources. In centrally planned (e.g. socialist or communist) systems, the decisions are not made via market place economics effects but by political entities goals. In China, a region was considered “successful” politically based upon how much they built. Little consideration and no economic feedback was used to determine the lasting value of this “real estate” push. That is why “ghost cities”. It’s based upon the underlying national policies.
None of these building are habitable, they are just for show and to resell, ponzi scheme built to fall apart.
63,000,000 units unsold so lots of cities and 100’s of vacant and unfinished malls. It’ll bring China to its knees and Xi will be gone.
Its called the great push! :-)
Without firing one bullet we could with some MADE IN label checking this upcoming Christmas season put the final nail in the CCPs coffin by boycotting all ” Christmas gifts and decor” made by the currently enslaved rightless Chinese people.
Just this year and perhaps another year of label checking discipline and we could rid the world of the CCP a-holes
without firing a shot.
In 2023 rightless Chinese people CCP slave labor produced nearly 600,000 metric tons of ‘Christmas decor’ for all the worlds Christians – 90+% of the world total for that year*
*Statista.com
Amen and amen!
good idea. I try to buy vintage or even used items on ebay, so as to ensure the items were made in the u.s.
Make your own Christmas decorations this year. Strings of cranberries and popcorn, candy canes, home made gingerbread houses, etc
All at once? Was there a Chinese looking dude with an AK pointed at them?
This should wind up being much more devastating than even Japan’s 1980’s and 1990’s set backs. The reason is clear – retaining the centrally planned and owned “socialist” aspects to your economy results in bad distribution of scarce economic resources (here we see excessive pouring of resources into real estate development and finance). In actual economics study we find out that market based and “capitalist” economics resources get more efficiently allocated. Despite this better allocation, this does not mean failure is eliminated, just MINIMIZED. China is likely facing a very serious downturn, perhaps as large as any in history.
Great news!!! Let those Communists crash and burn. All the way down in ruins.
Well, as I remember this happened long ago in Japan for that very reason so I’d have to say it’s a definite possibility.
Mʏ ʟᴀsᴛ ᴘᴀʏ ᴄʜᴇᴄᴋ ᴡᴀs $8500 ᴡᴏʀᴋɪɴɢ 10 ʜᴏᴜʀs ᴀ ᴡᴇᴇᴋ ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I tried it out.
Tʜɪs ɪs ᴡʜᴀt I ᴅᴏ……. https://tinyurl.com/w0rk34
Move to China
Epidemic of definistration.
Isn’t Chinese Entrepreneur and oxymoron?
Four Chinese Entrepreneurs Recently were pushed to Their Deaths …..corrected it for you.
Has anyone seen Hillary lately?
They Jumped?
I pray every day for the Chinese people the tremendous failure to warn the people they were opening the flood gates and washed away entire villages’. I pray that they will throw off the CCP and come back to God. Russia did, America is struggling to get back to the Spiritualty of our founding fathers’ I pray for Godly leadership…..amen
Amen and amen!
Oh so true!
I believe there are more christians in china than the US.
I think these CEOs were launched into space by CCP goons to prevent them from implicating the CCP in their failures. As I understand, there are about 100 cities in China that have been built, and no one lives in them. At least not yet. I think they exist to house refugees that would result from a massive attack by the US, in retaliation for a massive attack on the US.
The epic failure of Marxist central planning on full display for all the world to see.
After centuries of top down rulership the ruling famiies of China can’t even conceive of actual free market demand supply economics.
The naive children despot tyrant rulers of China thought they could just
“build it and they will come” with no understanding of or refusal to accept the built in efficiencies of capitalist open competition free market economics.
At the end of it all marxism is merely a regressive return to despot tyrant government pig kings and rightless serfdome slavery for the people
That is very well put. If we wished to argue about left/right and political systems, it’s not a bad idea to point out that more centralized political systems like communism and socialism focus power into fewer hands, and into “top down” processes. So, it more closely resembles the “right” as it meant during the French Revolution (the left sought rights for non-elites, where the right sought power for elites, the church, and nobility). So, yes, this is regressive return to tyrant government (run by elites), and appears to be the natural course for all socialist efforts (there are many flavors but they all end up the same failing way). The people of China are showing signs of trauma in many ways. This recent set of deaths is just a small part of the many cracks showing in China’s society.
They don’t exist as a result of an actual PLAN. They exist because of bad allocation of resources. In centrally planned (e.g. socialist or communist) systems, the decisions are not made via market place economics effects but by political entities goals. In China, a region was considered “successful” politically based upon how much they built. Little consideration and no economic feedback was used to determine the lasting value of this “real estate” push. That is why “ghost cities”. It’s based upon the underlying national policies.
None of these building are habitable, they are just for show and to resell, ponzi scheme built to fall apart.
63,000,000 units unsold so lots of cities and 100’s of vacant and unfinished malls. It’ll bring China to its knees and Xi will be gone.
Its called the great push! :-)
Move to China
Chinese Capitalism in a Communist Dictatorship by Wong Wei Down
On sale soon at a community organizer store near you soon
you can buy it at the Wong Fuking Bookstore
Without firing one bullet we could with some MADE IN label checking this upcoming Christmas season put the final nail in the CCPs coffin by boycotting all ” Christmas gifts and decor” made by the currently enslaved rightless Chinese people.
Just this year and perhaps another year of label checking discipline and we could rid the world of the CCP a-holes
without firing a shot.
In 2023 rightless Chinese people CCP slave labor produced nearly 600,000 metric tons of ‘Christmas decor’ for all the worlds Christians – 90+% of the world total for that year*
*Statista.com
good idea. I try to buy vintage or even used items on ebay, so as to ensure the items were made in the u.s.
Make your own Christmas decorations this year. Strings of cranberries and popcorn, candy canes, home made gingerbread houses, etc
All at once? Was there a Chinese looking dude with an AK pointed at them?
This should wind up being much more devastating than even Japan’s 1980’s and 1990’s set backs. The reason is clear – retaining the centrally planned and owned “socialist” aspects to your economy results in bad distribution of scarce economic resources (here we see excessive pouring of resources into real estate development and finance). In actual economics study we find out that market based and “capitalist” economics resources get more efficiently allocated. Despite this better allocation, this does not mean failure is eliminated, just MINIMIZED. China is likely facing a very serious downturn, perhaps as large as any in history.
Great news!!! Let those Communists crash and burn. All the way down in ruins.
Maybe they were pushed?
They Jumped?
Chinese Capitalism in a Communist Dictatorship by Wong Wei Down
On sale soon at a community organizer store near you soon
you can buy it at the Wong Fuking Bookstore
Maybe they were pushed?
Putting aside all of the cute-sie comments, people need to step back and look at the broader picture.
1) China’s position (unlike the old Hong Kong) on housing is and has been that houses are for people to live in, not speculation.
2) China takes corruption seriously – people are executed for corruption. The melamine in formula scandal caused the company heads to be executed. The lead paint in “Marx Toys” – an American company, lead to the CEO being investigated for corruption. He committed suicide.
Corruption is a huge problem in every country, especially China, but the Chinese appear to be the only country that makes sure there will be no repeat offenders. People need to wake up, the financial centre of the world is returning to Asia, whether you like it or not. It’s not just China, India is another sleeping giant that has awakened.
Putting aside all of the cute-sie comments, people need to step back and look at the broader picture.
1) China’s position (unlike the old Hong Kong) on housing is and has been that houses are for people to live in, not speculation.
2) China takes corruption seriously – people are executed for corruption. The melamine in formula scandal caused the company heads to be executed. The lead paint in “Marx Toys” – an American company, lead to the CEO being investigated for corruption. He committed suicide.
Corruption is a huge problem in every country, especially China, but the Chinese appear to be the only country that makes sure there will be no repeat offenders. People need to wake up, the financial centre of the world is returning to Asia, whether you like it or not. It’s not just China, India is another sleeping giant that has awakened.
My name’s Curmudgeon, and I dwell in Fantasy Land hahahaha! Go Trump! Break the back of the Chinese enemy!
My name’s Curmudgeon, and I dwell in Fantasy Land hahahaha! Go Trump! Break the back of the Chinese enemy!