China: the crash and the workers
The bill for the Chinese government’s gaudy response to the global crash of 2008 is now falling due. Then, the government promoted the biggest surge of investment in roads, bridges, railways, and buildings ever seen in world history. China has built a high-speed rail network bigger than all the rest of the world’s high-speed rail put together in just the few years since 2007. As with capitalist investment booms generally, the flipside was a rise of debt held in expectation of the returns from the investment once completed. Total debt in the Chinese economy has soared since 2008, and is now...