We saw the same thing happen in Korea and Japan after their post war construction, they moved up the ladder, worked hard, but then when they got a taste of real success there was a huge amount of speculation.
In the late 1980's Japanese real estate was the most valuable in the world, then it collapsed and they have not recovered.
This is a big secular shift for China. All of the previous projections were wrong, just like those indicating Japan would take over the world in the 1980's.
This is where China comes out of 'catch up' mode, and is now finding it's 'reality equilibrium' with the rest of the world.
> is now finding it's 'reality equilibrium' with the rest of the world.
the one big difference with all the previous examples is that China is authoritarian, where as the others were all (at least on paper) democratic.
China _could_ mandate the population to perform actions that the other tiger economies couldn't. I would be hesitant to assume that historical economic performance of japan and korea would give much indication to what future economic performance would be in china.
You should read about the political history of South Korea before making the claim that Korea was democractic (yes you hedged with "on paper" but that is meaningless).
In the late 1980's Japanese real estate was the most valuable in the world, then it collapsed and they have not recovered.
This is a big secular shift for China. All of the previous projections were wrong, just like those indicating Japan would take over the world in the 1980's.
This is where China comes out of 'catch up' mode, and is now finding it's 'reality equilibrium' with the rest of the world.