Bonnie: the mother of all bubbles is going to happen in China, if and only if, Chinese gov. will provide the kind of money supply like here the US gov. did, and if Chinese people will change their consumption patterns. I double it will happen. I am especially not betting on their changing pattern of consumption. This is a culture thing, and it is very hard to change. Majority of Chinese never take any credit, means they never borrow any money. The credit card few Chinese having now are secured credit card. That means they will have to deposit the same amount of cash first. It is sort of like the VISA check card here in the US. No banks in China are offering credit card like the US banks offering here as I know of. I mean you can borrow up to your credit limit without any cash down first.
The Chinese buy big ticket consumer items only after they save enough cash. Even if the Chinese who lived in the US now, very few of them ever borrow any money unless they are interest-free. They even try to return all their house mortgage as soon as possible (I know a couple who bought a >$100,000 house in a small town in OH and they already returned >60% of the total) in only 5 years. A couple of Chinese I know even pay cash for their new cars. And not like they don't have professional jobs. As a matter of fact, their household income is >$70,000. But they just don't want to pay any interest.
So the bottom line is it is very hard to make Chinese to borrow money. And not many of them will throw their hard-earned cash into stock market either, not to mention the majority don't have much cash left. Of course they will save enough money to buy computers, not for themselves but for their children. But not DELL because it is just too expensive, period. Please remember, I am talking about the majority Chinese here. Minority of young people or businessmen who have extra cash and who can take some risk will for sure fall in love with stock market, but not the majority. |
