Chinese economic growth continues to slow down and there is growing concern that the government is hiding many details of the problems involved. Chinese and foreign investors are increasingly concerned about the veracity of government economic data use to mask the real dangers. Because of the Internet, and despite Chinese efforts to “control” (censor and influence) information, it is possible to gather enough economic data to seriously challenge official government numbers. This is forcing the Chinese to reveal ugly truths they would prefer to keep hidden. China is trying to clean up the corruption in the banking sector and state owned enterprises but does not want the public watching. That’s partly because a lot of senior officials (present and past) were criminally responsible for this mess and partly because if these credit and government budget problems are not fixed there could be a major financial crises and years of economic depression. Most Chinese also know that if a crises is imminent government officials want to get the information first so they can save as much as possible of their personal wealth before the Chinese currency and stock markets lose most of their value. This is one reason why the government wants to control anti-corruption efforts, lest the public find out too many details of how badly behaved their leaders still are. Most Chinese already know their government is full of corrupt and inefficient officials but too many details of this mess could trigger another major uprising. It’s happened before, many times, in Chinese history. In the mid-19th century the Taiping uprising killed over 20 million. This little known (outside China) conflict was one of the four mega-wars (the Napoleonic Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, World Wars I and II) which together accounted for over 70 percent of the 250 million war dead since 1800.
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