"La classe moyenne chinoise" se réduit rapidement : stress, anxiété et désarroi.

A house that made a member of the middle class disappear, a curse that has spread widely in mainland China in 2009, may now become reality. Real estate in Shanghai is caught in a fatal cycle. Buyers don't dare to buy, sellers can't sell. The lower the prices, the more buyers don't dare to buy. They wait in line, which has also led to new homes not being able to sell. As the old ones remain unsold, week after week, the entire real estate market in Shanghai enters a recession. In addition, more and more young people have decided to change their way of life. They don't get married and don't buy a house. With the recession, licensed companies and a large number of people facing unemployment are not ready to buy and prefer to rent a house. Some say that at this rate, real estate agents will drink the wind. Correction, they already drink the wind. If the situation continues, they will eat dirt. It is currently 38 degrees, but it is less than 38 degrees on the real estate market. We are on July 23, on this day, in the district of Qiantan. What is the number of sales of old homes this month? Zero. What concept? Not a single one. Do you know how many agencies there are in this neighborhood? Seven. There were 12 at its peak, and now five have already been closed. And last month, there were three sales on Qiantan. To be clear, I'm not denigrating the real estate market. What I'm saying is the reality. But it's not just on Qiantan. Everywhere in Shanghai, it's about the same thing. Real estate overindebtedness affects not only the happiness index of the middle class, but also slows down consumption. Worse still, due to this material closure, rationality, stability, well-being or spiritual abundance that originally belonged to the middle class have also turned into nervousness, hesitation and anxiety. The society's pressure regulator has instantly turned into a pressure cooker. While official Chinese media claim that nothing has changed in China and that the middle class has regained the happiness it had before the epidemic, more and more Chinese people are realizing the difference. From now on, you have to keep a low profile, don't be complacent at all times or in front of anyone, because today the social grids are too heavy. I've seen all kinds of situations since I've been recycling gold. Today, society is broken. Look, the number of people who have closed their stores, have gone bankrupt, have put the key under the door, or even lost their jobs. People are starting to be more and more depressed, confused and overwhelmed. Some have even become depressed, and most people retain their discontent without knowing where and how to express it. Sometimes you can inadvertently make a gesture, even a look, that can attack a person, so that you become the target of these attacks. Don't think that you are powerful, at worst others will die with you. Look at everything that has happened around us for a year or two. So try not to throw yourself into confrontations or even verbal fights with strangers. China claims to have the largest middle class in the world. Look at this article published in Chinese media in 2022. The title is as follows. The Chinese middle class has 109 million people. It is the most important in the world. But how much money does it take to be a middle class family? Li Chen, a professor at Zhejiang University, said that in China, a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, about 4 cents a dollar, is considered an average income. Consequently, China has the largest middle class group with 460 million people. But this may be another beautiful rhetoric of the PCC. Although Western theories generally designate people from society who have an average income as the middle class. The current situation in China is marked by great flexibility and in the recognition criteria of the middle class. Indeed, people who earn between 4,000 yuan per month and 35,000 yuan per month, that is, between 632 and 4,785 US dollars per month, can be considered to be part of the middle class. But it is obvious that most people belonging to the middle class are at the end of the $ 632 per month fork, and not at the end of the $ 4,785. In mainland China, civil servants have long been considered like a bowl of rice in iron and many people think that by becoming civil servants, they can access the middle class. Because their income is stable and high. But what is the current situation? Is it true or false that civil servants have suffered a collective reduction in their salaries? Is it true or false that civil servants have suffered a collective reduction in their salaries? After Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other provinces, Guangdong province, economically developed, is no longer able to continue its activities. A few days ago, a meeting was held in Guangdong province to discuss adjustments to the salaries of civil servants. The province of Jiangsu has reduced the salaries of civil servants by 15%, that of Fujian by 20% and that of Zhejiang by 25%, the highest fork. This is already the case in the most prosperous provinces. What about less economically developed regions? Over the last two years, civil servants in many provinces have seen their salaries reduced one after the other. Ultimately, this is due to the impact of land financing. Thus, with the reduction of tax revenues, civil servants' salaries will naturally decrease. Sources in Guangdong and other provinces have revealed that it is a delusion that civil servants have seen their salaries decrease because of the decrease, or even the absence, of revenues from land financing. In China, well-educated young people are generally considered the future middle class. For example, the generation is born after the mid-1980s, the time when the Chinese economy began to take off. Most of them are single children. Compared to their parents, this generation thinks that expensive things are better. It is ready to try new things, seeks refinement and status, and is faithful to the brand it trusts. However, the young generation of today has also changed their way of life. First of all, they do not get married and do not buy housing. They set traps and prefer to rent rather than buy. For a 30-year loan, I have to pay $130,000 in interest. That is to say that in the end I have to repay nearly $280,000. The amount is not the question. The important thing is to look at this, you see, these are the interests of the first year, knowing that with the repayment method I chose, the interest is relatively low. Just the first month I have to pay 5,100 yuan more than the capital which is less than 3,000 yuan. And the apartment I am renting now costs me only about 2,000 yuan per month, with the charges. It does not exceed 1,200 yuan, does it? If I had to contract a loan to buy housing, how much interest should I pay during the first two years? The retirement of young people has reduced in one way or another the future middle class. Some Chinese businessmen find that the middle class seems to have suddenly disappeared. They are no longer in the places where they used to spend their money. As a result of the epidemic, China's internal demand, instead of growing, has decreased. In addition to these reasons related to real estate, the strict epidemic prevention policy carried out during COVID-19 has also prevented many companies from operating normally, which has led many small entrepreneurs in the middle class to lose their money and has forced them to become employees again. Relational deterioration between China and the United States has caused geopolitical tensions. People are no longer inclined to spend too much money on useless things. Therefore, even if there is still a middle class in society, it does not have the usual behavior of the middle class. Any economy that does not rely on a group of solid and common consumers without a source, which cannot continue to flow. We can say that the middle class does not have the existence of a middle class that a society has the momentum necessary for sustainable economic development. In the past, the Chinese economy has benefited from the growth of the middle class. Now that the pendulum has suddenly gone in the other direction, where will the Chinese economy go?