Earlier quoted context omitted.
China follows a nasty policy of financial repression ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression ) in which the interests of "the people" is an afterthought at best. ADDED: combine that with little to no social safety net, and the One Child policy which most? often results in 4 grandparents supported by 2 children supported by 1 grandchild (not quite so bad in the rural areas, but still inadequate, especiall…
This, incidentally, is why people in China riot about inflation from time to time: if you have to support yourself and several family members, you'd better have yourself a lot of savings, but it's really hard when your bank pays negative real interest rates. (And what's your alternative to the bank? Invest in the property bubble? Ha!) Then the banks loan out this savings to the party's preferred business partners (st…
Then I suppose it's good they don't let us invest very much in the country!
This makes it unlike e.g. Greece, where we're told there are a number of European banks outside with dangerous exposure, although there's been plenty of time to mitigate that. So conventional contagion might not be such a problem, I myself am worried about various goods and raw materials that the PRC has a current lock on. E.g. lots of pharmaceutical precursors.