Michael Pettis Interview with Lauren Lyster: Decade of Slower Growth for China

Here is an interview of Michael Pettis by Lauren Lyster from the Wine Country Conference. Pettis says China faces a decade of slower growth.

“I don’t think it’s either averting a disaster or heading for one,” Pettis says. “What I think we’re going to have is a decade or more of much, much lower growth.”

According to Peter Schiff, CEO of Europacific Capital, there is “more capitalism in communist China than there is in America."...

“It’s definitely not more capitalist than the U.S.,” Pettis says of China. “It’s quite tough to run a small business or any kind of business for a variety of reasons. The big saving grace of my club and CD label is that we don’t ever expect to be profitable. It’s easy to be successful if you don’t have to earn anything.”

Pollution in China is another concern we routinely hear about in Western media. A study from the Health Effects Institute, funded in part by the Environmental Protection Agency, found that Chinese pollution caused 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, while the Financial Times reports “airpocalypse” has sent expats fleeing.

Pettis says getting rid of pollution is a political question that will require a significant portion of the urban middle class getting upset about it. He says in the last year, for the first time in the 11 years he’s been living in China, he’s seeing this type of substantial opposition in Beijing and Shanghai. Still, he notes, it’s likely to take many, many years to address the issue.

Click on the link at the top to see the complete video interview with Lauren Lyster. His session presentation was quite good. I will post that presentation when available.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com