At the moment the Government/Communist party has to come up with a lot of money to ringfence Evergrande and the other property developers, buy foreign hydrocarbons to keep the lights on and maintain social spending to keep a lid on potential unrest. So scale back those hopes and dreams.
From TheInterpreter at Australia's Lowy Institute, October 4:
Xi Jinping tempers the expectations and aspirations of the country’s next generation.
Of the many great books that have been written on contemporary China, there are few that I can recommend more highly than Evan Osnos’ Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China. Having spent much of my own early career in Beijing, Osnos’ writing captures the emotional essence of what made the place so intoxicating: an environment of striving, for wealth, for advancement, for meaning, or for connection with the broader world.
Central to the book is the looming conflict between the flourishing of individual aspirations and the heavy hand of the Party-state. Seven years since publication, that conflict appears to be intensifying. As China’s President Xi Jinping continues to dramatically shape China according to his vision, it appears the country’s “age of ambition” may be behind it.
While emphasising Marxist thought (and his own ideology) in a way not seen since the days of Mao Zedong, Xi is using the levers of the Party-state to aggressively tackle the country’s looming demographic crisis. Whether as an intended result or unintended byproduct of his new priorities, China is diverging diplomatically, socially and economically from much of the world.
Since coming to power in 2013, Xi has used the slogan of the “China Dream” (中国梦) to present an idealised life of aspiration and mobility in which hopes of a better life really could come true. For those who lived through China’s economic miracle of the past 40 years, that dream was one in which a malnourished farmer could see their child go on to get a job at a Fortune 500 company, or strike it rich by opening a manufacturing or exporting business. There was perhaps no better representative of this dream than Jack Ma, whose well-documented rise from English teacher to China’s wealthiest man inspired a cult following.
Yet what is increasingly clear, is that Ma’s version of the “China Dream” is not the one that Xi has in mind. For many Chinese people, this means rethinking their expectations and aspirations for their own futures and that of their children....
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Some scholars are concerned that the risk of a miscalculation by Xi and the Party is greater now than when China was (Potemkin) booming post-2008 Beijing Olympics.
