© Minyanville
While "conspicuous luxury consumption may not be on its deathbed quite yet in China," Avery Booker of Jing Daily
suggests that "social tensions" over a widening wealth gap "may ultimately put the last nails in bling's coffin."
"In education, recruitment, employment and various other sectors, the pattern of power-retention by the powerful is solidifying, yet the rights of the lower classes often suffer encroachment," Dai Zhiyong of
Southern Weekend newspaper
wrote last year. "The hardening of the hierarchy is right before our eyes. The channel of upward mobility for the lower classes is narrowing by the day."
And though
Forbes says that "financial turmoil gripping the world has had little effect on wealth in China, where an ongoing economic boom keeps creating new U.S. dollar billionaires," Taiwan's
Want China Times says "the rich in China are ... vulnerable to threats, physical violence and blackmail."
Is China ready to boil over?
"The Gini coefficient in China has been continuously rising after it reached the alarming 0.4-level 10 years ago," researcher Chang Xiuze
told the
Economic Information Daily in 2010. With
0.5 being the point at which income inequality is thought to lead to social unrest, China is dangerously close the the precipice.
And Jonathan Manthorpe of the
Vancouver Sun notes that rank-and-file Chinese "are not responding meekly to revived servitude," creating a "seething undercurrent of discontent" and leading to an estimated 180,000 "strikes, demonstrations, and riots involving over 1,000 people," or, 493 each day, taking place around the country last year.
Comment: Seems the time is now ripe to push the global economy over the edge. Markets and individuals will mechanically react to what they hear coming from Lagarde, Zoellick, Geithner and the like. Their unified scripted message of "danger" perfectly timed to create a definite effect - such words are not used by chance. And you can be sure that the desired effect in this case is one that serves purely the interests of the bankers.