OPINION:
Little things sometimes mean a lot, and big things nearly always do. Li Ka-shing is an aging (87) Hong Kong tycoon worth billions of dollars in real estate, telecommunications companies, and even artificial flowers. Artificial flowers is where he got his start to becoming one of the richest men in the world. He has been one of the Beijing government’s favorite capitalists. But lately, not so much. A bubble is artificial, after all.
People’s Daily, the government’s mouthpiece newspaper, reports that Mr. Li has been taking much of his wealth out of China in the face of growing concern that the Chinese economy is a bubble in trouble.
Mr. Li says that’s not so, but his denials have not reduced the concern about the China outlook. The fact that Mr. Li appears to be moving his operations out of Hong Kong adds to that concern. The Hong Kong newspapers have speculated that Mr. Li has withdrawn $16 billion in assets from the mainland over the past three years. With a net worth estimated at more than $33 billion, that almost half of his assets.
In his denial, Mr. Li says his companies are merely being “more prudent” toward real estate investments in China, reflecting a general consensus that one of the government’s problems is how to handle a growing property bubble. With China’s gross domestic product growth now officially estimated at the lowest in almost three decades, the Communist Party’s attack is not only bitter, but defensive.
“Li Ka-shing’s choices do appear particularly brazen,” the People’s Daily observed. “In the eyes of ordinary people, we shared comfort and prosperity together in the good times, but when the hard times come he abandons us. This has really left some people speechless.”
Mr. Li insists that, unlike some Chinese investors, he did not hold land as a hedge against inflation or other economic downturns. Many of Mr. Li’s properties are held through offshore banking sanctuaries in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, done for Hong Kong stock market listing purposes, and he notes that some of his mainland investments include retail stores. These holdings are expanding. He says he backs the reform programs of Xi Jinping, the chief of the Communist Party and the supreme leader of the government.
Good Marxist capitalist or not, the evidence is accumulating that not only is China’s growth declining to low levels, but the swiftness of the fall is feeding pessimism. Pessimists are still a minority; the majority concede a “major readjustment” but nevertheless argue that the Chinese economy will continue to thrive, if at a much lower pace, as it sheds its infrastructure investment strategy for a new consumerism.
The pessimists point out, however, that the Chinese economy sailed through the 2007-08 worldwide financial crisis by an unprecedented credit expansion. That has led to bank debt growing from $14 trillion in 2008 to $25 trillion today — more than double the total U.S. commercial banking sector. To facilitate this, the Beijing government has printed money at an unprecedented rate. This strategy in other places has historically led to financial chaos.
China’s miraculous manufacturing expansion was based on an abundant pool of low-wage workers, and this pool is drying up as a result of the one-child birth policy. Rising labor and other costs are reducing the capacity of Chinese exporters to compete with other low-wage countries and growing productivity in other markets, including the United States.
The Shanghai stock market roller coaster — which the authorities unsuccessfully tried to curb — is a further sign that a debt crisis might be imminent. That’s why Mr. Li, if abandoning the Chinese economy, could be the big and canny player recognizing trouble before anyone else. That’s a scary possibility in Beijing.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.