The staying power of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ with Chinese viewers is a wonder to behold. The most watched U. S. show in China even has mainlanders flocking to California for the July 4 opening of Universal Studios Hollywood’s newest attraction: a walk-through park that lets you act the part of post-apocalyptic survivor fleeing the flesh-eating undead.
Soon enough, though, China’s 1.4 billion people may be able to get their zombie fix at home, where the government is staging the economic equivalent of their favorite TV experience. That’s because President Xi Jinping’s pledge to breathe new life into a staggering growth model faces its own untimely death (adding to the world’s grief over the U. K. exiting the European Union).
The first real sign of China’s zombification was Beijing’s failure to attack overcapacity in industries ranging from shipbuilding to steel to mining to cement. In March, theFinancial Times provoked anger in Beijing with its ‘China’s State-Owned Zombie Economy’ headline, along with many others in the foreign media. The second hint came in April, when Xi’s government rolled out plans for a Japan-like debt-to-equity swap program. The International Monetary Fund pounced, warning that securitizing loans might ‘worsen the problem’ by supporting ‘zombie’ companies better off disappearing.
This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on June 27, 2016.
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