- China’s problem can no longer be considered primarily economic. That train has left. The economic reality is locked in and will remain in place for a long time. China is now in the throes of a political challenge. The coastal region will be growing at a much slower rate than before, if at all. People who came from the interior for jobs will have to return to the interior. A vast and impoverished region, the interior is the population heartland of China—over 60 percent of China’s population lives there. But the coast is the country’s economic heartland, and that dichotomy defines China’s political problem.
I don't see the CCP regime's stability being threatened at any point in the near future (Xi Jinping himself, who knows, but the guy's amassed more power than any leader since Deng Xiaoping, so things would have to go very wrong, very quickly) just because quite literally everything the CCP does is calculated to help preserve the regime. That includes everything from foreign policy to education to ethnic minorities to urban planning, etc etc. These guys are very good at preventing any sort of cross-class, cross-platform uprising or discontent, and when even a hint of that appears around the corner, they move to crush it. It is true that the CCP's legitimacy was repaired after the Cultural Revolution by a booming economy, but they've taken steps to try and 'diversify', if that makes sense. The rise in nationalistic discourse (a lot of which is actually propagated by the PLA) and the growing blur between the idea of a Chinese state and the Party-state is no coincidence. I mean yeah, it is hard to say how nationalistic or loyal people are going to be in the face of a massive economic disaster, but I wouldn't just assume that the PLA is going to swoop in and side with some populist uprising. If anything, it'll splinter, and the country would be thrown into a second round of the CR. I suspect the real problem that faces the CCP is just sheer demographics. Xi and his predecessors have done an alright job at actually bridging the divide between the interior and the coastal provinces (places like Anhui and the West tend to be outliers in this, granted) but the real divide is now between the urban and the rural. And, worst yet, is the divide between the people with rural hukou versus an urban one. There have been a couple hints that the government is just going to completely abolish the household registration system, which would mean a huge expansion of the relatively robust urban welfare system - but the problem is that would quickly become unsustainable, just because in about 15-20 years all those young, productive workers that fuelled the country from the 80s onwards will start to retire, and there won't be nearly enough people to replace them. Ultimately though the Party can't outrun its people's grievances forever...but they are very good at co-opting dissent and enacting pretty impressive reforms. I dunno that it would be enough to actually save the one party state but I guess only time can tell.
Putting it this way, what happens in the next dot-bomb when all those guys making 100K a year have to move back to BFE Kansas and can't find work, but have to move back in with mom and dad, or take the crappy job making 35K a year that pays the bills and not much else.
My friends, you mean? My friends who had options in Go2Net that were underwater a year before they vested? My friends who were among the first 50 employees at Snapfish but then got laid off when HP bought it? My friends who were VPs at RealNetworks back when people put up with 40kbps RA for a fee? Yeah, they're fucked for life. The entitlement is kind of amazing. Because they were overpaid once, they think they deserve to be overpaid always so they walk around with this chip on their shoulder as if the world owes them not just a living, but a cushy living. And they don't get it, and they're defiant, and they go withdrawn, and they change careers a dozen times, and they spend the next 15 years (at least) chasing the dragon. One of those friends occasionally flies helicopters on Hawaii. His parents mostly pay for him. Another did freelance advertising and now wants to get into video editing at 41. Her living situation ain't great. The third - well, he's doing okay. He founded a software studio that codes apps for other people and I think he's got like 15 employees and good on him. But he also got headhunted out of Real before it went tits-up. He also kinda saw the writing on the wall and got while the getting was good.