Here’s two big reasons to doubt the global boom
Most of that wealth arose in tech.
The crackdown has been cast as a healthy move to contain monopolies, or as a state bid to gain control over big data. It is, however, also an unsurprising response by the Communist party to this unprecedented explosion in wealth and inequality.
This new campaign follows an old pattern, going back at least to economy tsar Zhu Rongji in the early 1990s. China has risen as an economic superpower over the past four decades as the state retreated, freeing capitalists to generate growth.
Shopping in Chicago. Americans have chosen to spend only about a third of their pandemic stimulus cheques, saving or paying down their debts with the rest. AP
But at times state managers step in to restrain capitalism when its apparent excesses — of corruption or debt bubbles or inequality — grow too glaring for their liking.
Often the campaign has been accompanied by a slowdown in the economy but ends before the damage…
