Speaker 1: There could have got me.
Speaker 2: I was interviewing one person in the Kentucky Fried Chicken
Speaker 2: in the city we were being watched. There were people
Speaker 2: close by from the government, and they actually came over
Speaker 2: and approached us. So under those circumstances, it's really difficult
Speaker 2: to drill down and get people to be frank about
Speaker 2: what's going on.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reporter Colin Murphy recently traveled to Hoogong. It's a
Speaker 1: remote coal town in northeastern China that found itself under
Speaker 1: a mountain of debt and was forced to undergo an
Speaker 1: unprecedented financial restructuring. The fiscal squeeze has made life for
Speaker 1: many there even harder, and Hoogung is not alone. Other
Speaker 1: heavily indebted cities in China may soon follow, and that
Speaker 1: threatens to become a drag on the world's second largest
Speaker 1: economy for years to come. It could also have wider
Speaker 1: repercussions beyond China's borders. Here's Bloomberg's James Mager.
Speaker 3: If you're a commodity exporting country like Brazil or Australia,
Speaker 3: or if you're or Southeast Asian nation that's looking to
Speaker 3: move up the value chain by selling manufactured goods to China.
Speaker 3: If Chinese people are buying less of those goods, that's
Speaker 3: less income for you, So there's less growth for the
Speaker 3: whole world basically, So the first way that transmits through
Speaker 3: is to slower growth globally.
Speaker 1: I'm Wescasilva today on the Big Take. Calum and James
Speaker 1: join me from Beijing to explain why the financial struggles
Speaker 1: of one town point to larger troubles for China.
Speaker 2: Hargan is a small city by Chinese standards. It has
Speaker 2: a population of about one million their give or take,
Speaker 2: and it's located in the very northeast corner of China,
Speaker 2: in a province called halong Jiang, which is one of
Speaker 2: the coldest corners of the country. The town itself is
Speaker 2: a stone's throat away from the Russian border, and it's
Speaker 2: known for its history of coal mining. It's a coal
Speaker 2: town and at one point in its history it was
Speaker 2: quite prosperous as a result of this industry. But over
Speaker 2: the years that industry has been in decline and the
Speaker 2: revenues coming from coal have also been on the way down.
Speaker 2: The population has been declining over the past decade. The
Speaker 2: city is looking for ways to try to find new
Speaker 2: sources of economic growth. What it's looking to these days
Speaker 2: is more like graphite, which is a material that's used
Speaker 2: extensively in things, for example, like electric vehicles. And it's
Speaker 2: also trying to tap tourism, but its location in a
Speaker 2: very remote coal part of China, it doesn't really make
Speaker 2: it it all year round tourist destination, so that's quite
Speaker 2: a challenge. Another thing that Hagang is famous for more
Speaker 2: recently is that unlike developed cities in China such as
Speaker 2: Beijing and Shanghai, the property prices in hagan are actually
Speaker 2: very very cheap, so cheap that they have begun to
Speaker 2: attract people from outside. So these are young people who
Speaker 2: basically feel overstressed or unable to achieve the so called
Speaker 2: China dream in the terms of buying their own apartment,
Speaker 2: and they're looking to move to places like Hogong where
Speaker 2: they can pick up fairly decent apartment for almost next
Speaker 2: to nothing. This debt issue facing a place like Hogong
Speaker 2: is something that the Chinese government and the local governments
Speaker 2: are certainly not proud of and not something that they
Speaker 2: want to broadcast to the world. For example, when we
Speaker 2: turned up to ho Gong after flying from Beijing. Basically,
Speaker 2: we were greeted by local officials, a combination of propaganda
Speaker 2: officials and also security officials. I should say we did
Speaker 2: not tell them we were going there, but nonetheless they
Speaker 2: knew that we were coming, and they were determined to
Speaker 2: do everything they could to influence or at least hinder
Speaker 2: our reporting. So it was quite difficult to do simple
Speaker 2: things like voxpop. But when we did manage to eventually
Speaker 2: speak to some of the local people, what we found
Speaker 2: was a sort of obviously a caution about talking about this,
Speaker 2: and beneath the surface of sort of normality, there definitely
Speaker 2: was concerns being expressed by all sorts of people that
Speaker 2: we interviewed. So, for example, street cleaners had experienced delays
Speaker 2: to their salaries of up to two months. One hospital
Speaker 2: worker that we spoke to had her contract, which was
Speaker 2: directly with the hospital, unilaterally changed, and now she ends
Speaker 2: up working for our third party company on a salary
Speaker 2: that's not as optimal or as good as it was before.
Speaker 4: We used to get ten yuan extra for working on
Speaker 4: public holidays such as the New Year's Day. Now, since
Speaker 4: we're employed by the property management company, we get nothing.
Speaker 4: Of course, I'm upset about the situation. How can I
Speaker 4: feel good about this?
Speaker 2: Taxi drivers were complaining about morphines as the government tries
Speaker 2: to find new ways to increase their revenue, and teachers
Speaker 2: were worried about job cuts. So I would say, on
Speaker 2: the surface, it looked like a normal sort of small
Speaker 2: city in the remote corner of China. But when we
Speaker 2: talk to people and dug down a little bit, it
Speaker 2: was clear that people were at least concerned about how
Speaker 2: life in the city is getting harder and economically more
Speaker 2: difficult for them.
Speaker 1: James's common describes the financial economic situation is pretty stressed
Speaker 1: and they had to undergo unprecedented financial restructuring. Can you
Speaker 1: describe exactly why that happened and where things are now?
Speaker 3: So the city is faced to the number of economic
Speaker 3: problems some of that has called them described. There are
Speaker 3: many old coal towns around the world, in the US
Speaker 3: and UK and Europe and other places where the call
Speaker 3: is dried up and there's no jobs anymore, and I
Speaker 3: think people can imagine what that it's like, and it's
Speaker 3: the same in China. So you're seeing in Hogang the
Speaker 3: population fell by about sixteen percent between twenty ten and
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. The population of the broader province of Heilongjong
Speaker 3: has also fell about that same amount. So the whole
Speaker 3: province of Heilongjong lost about six and a half million
Speaker 3: people in that ten year period, which is more than
Speaker 3: the population of most US states. That's people dying or
Speaker 3: moving to warmer climates further south where there are better jobs.
Speaker 3: So you're seeing an erosion of jobs. You're seeing an
Speaker 3: erosion of the tax base because there are less people
Speaker 3: to pay taxes. There are fewer businesses as coal mines
Speaker 3: closed down, and so the economy of the city of
Speaker 3: Hgang itself peaked in twenty twelve. It never achieved that
Speaker 3: level that reached in twenty twelve again until twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and that was only because of the big spike and
Speaker 3: call prices that we saw last year because of the
Speaker 3: Russian invasion of Ukraine. So you're looking at a city
Speaker 3: that has a falling population, a stagnating economy, but the
Speaker 3: debt levels of the city have been rising rapidly over
Speaker 3: this time as the local government has tried to spend
Speaker 3: its way out of these economic problems. We don't have
Speaker 3: full data, but it seems like the official debt of
Speaker 3: the government does more than an increase fivefold between twenty
Speaker 3: fifteen and twenty twenty two. So the government is facing
Speaker 3: this massive debt burden, but its population is shrinking, its
Speaker 3: tax base is shrinking, and it's struggling to pay for
Speaker 3: the services that it's meant to provide and also to
Speaker 3: pay for the interest payments and the repayments of the
Speaker 3: debt that it does.
Speaker 1: And James, this is a problem obviously for the people
Speaker 1: who live in this city in China, but it's also
Speaker 1: a problem for China more broadly. As you write, can
Speaker 1: you explain why that is so?
Speaker 3: The fiscal restructuring in Hrgang is a problem for the
Speaker 3: local economy. For example, local banks and Halong Jungle that
Speaker 3: have lent money to the city or have bought the
Speaker 3: bonds that the city is solved from, the local government
Speaker 3: financing vehicles to pay for various different kinds of projects
Speaker 3: and things that the city is doing. The bigger problem
Speaker 3: for the province and for China is that this is
Speaker 3: an isolated case. This is not just one city which
Speaker 3: is in this situation. There are many cities that are
Speaker 3: in a similar situation of her Gang. Maybe they're not
Speaker 3: quite as extreme. This situation is not quite as bad
Speaker 3: as it is in this place. But as I said,
Speaker 3: the population of halong Young shrunk by six point five
Speaker 3: million people in ten years. There are many other cities
Speaker 3: in the Northeast that are facing this similar problem of
Speaker 3: a shrinking population decreasing number of jobs. There are many
Speaker 3: many coal towns and steel towns across the northeast. It's
Speaker 3: China's rust belt, and those industries are stagnating and going away.
Speaker 3: So one problem that these growing debt problems that are
Speaker 3: popping up in places around China in Helong Jog, as
Speaker 3: we saw in Hokong in Guejo in the south of
Speaker 3: the country as well, which is also facing an unsustainable
Speaker 3: debt situation, is that it makes it much much harder
Speaker 3: for the government in Beijing to achieve what it's set out.
Speaker 3: Is it kind of making financial goals for the next
Speaker 3: few years. President y Jinping has set a goal of
Speaker 3: doubling the size of the economy by twenty thirty five.
Speaker 3: They also have another goal of what they call common prosperity,
Speaker 3: which in a western center is basically just increasing income equality.
Speaker 3: So instead of having very rich provinces like Shanghai or
Speaker 3: Guangdong and then very poor provinces like Halong, jog A, Gueijo.
Speaker 3: The government wants to equalize income across the country. The
Speaker 3: problem is that a lot of these improveraiyed places are
Speaker 3: also very heavily indebted, as we saw in her Gung,
Speaker 3: and someone has to deal with those debt problems which
Speaker 3: are holding the economy backs. If those debt problems become
Speaker 3: harder and harder and larger and larger to deal with,
Speaker 3: that's going to affect growth in those regional economies or
Speaker 3: frential economies, and that's going to make it much much
Speaker 3: harder for the central government to achieve both the doubling
Speaker 3: of the size of the economy, but also harder to
Speaker 3: achieve this income equality that they're aiming for.
Speaker 1: Calum James Head talked about comment prosperity. This goal of
Speaker 1: Jenna how is common prosperity defined?
Speaker 2: Definitions here tend to be fluid at the best, and
Speaker 2: implementation of these policies not very obvious at times. But
Speaker 2: I think what basically underlines or lies underneath this common
Speaker 2: prosperity push is the belief by the President cheating Pin
Speaker 2: that there were inequalities in the economy. So on the
Speaker 2: one hand, we had these entrepreneurs and business people from
Speaker 2: the private sector who making a fortune. The city's Beijing
Speaker 2: Shanghai lifestyle was through the roof. People were expending excessively
Speaker 2: on the education of their children, both during the school
Speaker 2: day but also in the after hours, sending them to
Speaker 2: extra tuition classes, very very costly, all in order to
Speaker 2: get them and give them a step up in the
Speaker 2: China society for when they graduate go to university. So
Speaker 2: it was emerging inequalities were becoming quite visible, and that
Speaker 2: obviously goes against what the Party would hope to stand
Speaker 2: for in terms of a more equal society. So it
Speaker 2: was a step by sea to try to address that,
Speaker 2: and of course we saw that play out in a
Speaker 2: couple of ways. There was the crackdown on tech after
Speaker 2: our schooling industry was basically shut down. All of these
Speaker 2: were kind of negative steps to maybe dial back a
Speaker 2: little bit some of the excesses. And then in parallel
Speaker 2: it goes hand in hand maybe with his strategy of
Speaker 2: poverty alleviation, whereby the government is trying outreach to these
Speaker 2: poorer communities around the country, especially rural ones, and introducing
Speaker 2: plans and programs that are designed to increase their ability
Speaker 2: to participate in the modern Chinese economy. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of like a combination of dialing back to the excesses
Speaker 2: of the rich while giving the poor a helping hand
Speaker 2: with the aim of narrowing that gap in terms of
Speaker 2: income equality.
Speaker 1: When you spoke to people in Hugong, what do they
Speaker 1: say about this goal of common prosperity, about Ji's promise
Speaker 1: for everyone to kind of share in the wealth.
Speaker 2: You'll find here that there's a lot of slogans that
Speaker 2: take place at the macro level, and you'll see she
Speaker 2: talking about this, and you'll see the party issuing statements
Speaker 2: about this. But actually, when you talk to people on
Speaker 2: the street, they're not going to come and say, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about She's common prosperity. Basically, they're more
Speaker 2: focused on their day to day what is it that
Speaker 2: the government is doing to help them or to assist
Speaker 2: them in making money, but also, you know, the education
Speaker 2: and job opportunities for their children going forward. So on
Speaker 2: that note, you know, we did talk to people who
Speaker 2: were trying to operate small businesses, and there's a sense
Speaker 2: that the government is looking for more stringently applying restrictions,
Speaker 2: charging fees and fines things that are actually in a
Speaker 2: way impeding their ability to do business. So that's one
Speaker 2: of the more practical implications on the ground. But another
Speaker 2: thing that was quite surprising, and again we need to
Speaker 2: be mindful that these interviews are sometimes conducted in less
Speaker 2: than optimal situations. For example, I was interviewing one person
Speaker 2: in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the city, and there
Speaker 2: was obviously we were being watched. There were people close
Speaker 2: by from the government, and they actually came over and
Speaker 2: approached us. So under those circumstances, it's really difficult to
Speaker 2: drill down and get people to be frank about what's
Speaker 2: going on. So some of the answers we get are
Speaker 2: sometimes we have to take them with a pinch of salt.
Speaker 2: One of the arguments people were saying was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so maybe we're not as economically progressive or developed as
Speaker 2: other parts of China, but our quality of life, our
Speaker 2: pace of life is better here, is slower here. So
Speaker 2: it's this sort of like explain in a very generous
Speaker 2: way what the economy and the government actions, how they're
Speaker 2: playing out. But of course, no matter how generous their
Speaker 2: take is on their situation. The reality is that if
Speaker 2: we accumulate an add all of these situations up nationally,
Speaker 2: that is not going to help she or China achieve their.
Speaker 1: Goal after the break. China's president has a political stake
Speaker 1: in getting this problem under control, James. We see income
Speaker 1: inequality all over the world. Of course, how big of
Speaker 1: a problem is it in China.
Speaker 3: The income and equality in China is stock. The data
Speaker 3: we have on show that is not as good as
Speaker 3: the data you might see in the US or in
Speaker 3: other places. But Beijing's Tier one cities like Beijing and
Speaker 3: Shanghai are the same living standards as developed nations in
Speaker 3: the West. There's no difference in the equality of services,
Speaker 3: the income levels, the cost of living in these places
Speaker 3: is basically unchanged from Australia or the US or Europe.
Speaker 3: And then you have very very poor places in other
Speaker 3: parts of the country which are very underdeveloped, and the
Speaker 3: income equality across regions is stuck. And then within cities
Speaker 3: you also have incredible gaps between the rich and the poor.
Speaker 3: And this is a real problem and it's and this
Speaker 3: has been growing as China has grown, and you see
Speaker 3: these people like Jack Mah from Ali Baba and other
Speaker 3: incredibly wealthy people. The government looks at that and they say,
Speaker 3: these people are very wealthy. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: other people who are not wealthy, who are poor, who
Speaker 3: are struggling, who can't afford to buy apartments in the
Speaker 3: cities where they live. We need to do something about this.
Speaker 3: So common prosperities are sort of overarching slogan of the
Speaker 3: government that really is kind of similar to a lot
Speaker 3: of the stuff you see in other countries where politicians
Speaker 3: are trying to say the cost of living is too high,
Speaker 3: inflation is too high, we need to do something to
Speaker 3: provide housing and these things that our people want. And
Speaker 3: I think the interesting thing here is that this kind
Speaker 3: of shows the difficulty the central government actually has enforcing
Speaker 3: the rest of the country to do things that they want.
Speaker 3: I mean, people think of China as this authoritarian state
Speaker 3: where Chijinpin can do anything he wants, and that's certainly
Speaker 3: true in some situations. If he wants to do a
Speaker 3: specific thing, he can totally make everyone do that. But
Speaker 3: he can't do that all the time about everything, and
Speaker 3: so you're seeing this. For example, the government wants to
Speaker 3: crack down on hidden debt and make sure that cities
Speaker 3: and provinces aren't hiding dead off the balance sheets but
Speaker 3: keeping on other balance sheets. And all the cities and
Speaker 3: provinces places like her Gug are saying, hey, that's a
Speaker 3: great idea for everyone else, not for me. So the
Speaker 3: central government has been trying to de risk the economy
Speaker 3: by putting all this debt on the balance sheets, and
Speaker 3: everyone is saying that, yeah, that's a great idea. The
Speaker 3: riskin is a great idea, but not for us. We
Speaker 3: want to continue to borrow and spend so that we
Speaker 3: can develop our economy.
Speaker 1: Is the situation in Hagung an indication of what could
Speaker 1: start to happen in other cities across the country.
Speaker 3: There are probably many other places that have debt levels
Speaker 3: that are just as high. It just hasn't been announced,
Speaker 3: and there are many other places that are in similarly
Speaker 3: dire fiscal straits. It just hasn't come out yet. It
Speaker 3: hasn't been reported in the local media. The local government
Speaker 3: hasn't put out a statement about the problems that they're facing.
Speaker 3: There are places around the country where the government has
Speaker 3: said we have to stop providing X and Y services,
Speaker 3: bus services or heating for example, and her gang. In
Speaker 3: the winter, the local heating company suddenly said, we're not
Speaker 3: going to provide heating for the city because we haven't
Speaker 3: been paid our money. So there is these little sort
Speaker 3: of things that pop up in the local media or whatever.
Speaker 3: You see these cases. But I think the problem is
Speaker 3: that this is much more widespread than is being reported.
Speaker 3: The population declines, especially the northeast of China is seeing,
Speaker 3: are incredibly, incredibly damaging the economy, and there's no way
Speaker 3: that that's going to be reversed. These are aging societies,
Speaker 3: and the young people who would have kids are looking
Speaker 3: to move away or have already moved away because there's
Speaker 3: no jobs.
Speaker 1: How important is it Tiji's power that people have trust
Speaker 1: in him.
Speaker 2: We talked earlier about how other countries have face similar challenges.
Speaker 2: But one thing that's important obviously in China is that
Speaker 2: we don't have the channels. People don't have the proper
Speaker 2: channels to express their frustrations or their desires or requirements
Speaker 2: of the government. So what happens is that frustration and
Speaker 2: dissatisfaction can from time to time raise up in the
Speaker 2: form of protests, and that can be a very big
Speaker 2: problem for the party. That's not what they want to see.
Speaker 2: They do not want social instability. So in order to
Speaker 2: make sure that that doesn't happen, the government really has
Speaker 2: to be seen to improve the people's livelihoods. Because the
Speaker 2: original sort of contract, if you will, between the party
Speaker 2: and the people is that this is very a little
Speaker 2: bit over simplistic, perhaps, but we have the power, but
Speaker 2: we in exchange, we will take care of your livelihood,
Speaker 2: will give you an opportunity to be part of an
Speaker 2: economy that's growing and prosperous. So if that starts to
Speaker 2: break down, then it does create huge stress points for
Speaker 2: the government. Now, in terms of trust, it is super
Speaker 2: important that maintains that trust. But we've had a couple
Speaker 2: of incidents in the past couple of years with she
Speaker 2: and his government where that trust has definitely been challenged,
Speaker 2: if not eroded, And I think one specific case would
Speaker 2: have been the COVID handling and the Shanghai lockdown in particular,
Speaker 2: that was a moment where it looked as if people
Speaker 2: really were just fed up with the top down government approach.
Speaker 2: In the end, he survived that it didn't really have
Speaker 2: any lasting impact on his credibility, but as these sort
Speaker 2: of events frequency increase over time, it is possible that
Speaker 2: this will continue to erode away at She's credibility. So
Speaker 2: it's super important that the government be seen to take
Speaker 2: action on this and do it in a way that
Speaker 2: has a meaningful impact on the peer people's lives. Now,
Speaker 2: having said that, there's one issue here is that about
Speaker 2: the transparency of this discussion, which I begin with, is
Speaker 2: very very low, and even up until recently, I would
Speaker 2: say the standard reaction from the Chinese governments, especially through
Speaker 2: state media, has been to sort of dismiss talk of
Speaker 2: the debt problem by saying, oh, this is Western media
Speaker 2: overblowing it. It's actually not that bad, and everything's under control,
Speaker 2: it's stable. So there hasn't really been a sort of
Speaker 2: a deep reckoning with the issue. Now, I think there
Speaker 2: are indications that that's starting to change. We're starting to
Speaker 2: see more a little bit more discussion of it in
Speaker 2: the media, but definitely I don't see at this point
Speaker 2: a real sort of willingness to tackle this problem head on,
Speaker 2: and that is an issue. If the government doesn't address
Speaker 2: this quickly, then it could be that that sort of
Speaker 2: social tension will only continue to rise.
Speaker 1: When we return the possible ripple effects of China's local
Speaker 1: debt in other parts of the world. James, given everything
Speaker 1: that came, has just said, what solutions do the Chinese
Speaker 1: government have to the problems that are now spreading across
Speaker 1: the country to other cities.
Speaker 3: A lot of these indebted places are basically looking for
Speaker 3: a handout from the central government, and the central government
Speaker 3: so far is not willing to do that. And the
Speaker 3: reason for that is if they give money to one city,
Speaker 3: if they give money to one province, then every other
Speaker 3: city and province in China is going to come to
Speaker 3: them and say, hey, you paid off Guayjow's debts, how
Speaker 3: come you won't pay off my debts? And so they're
Speaker 3: having to balance these moral hazard of They do need
Speaker 3: to solve these problems, but if they step in too early,
Speaker 3: then a lot of the problems won't be solved at
Speaker 3: the local level where the government wants them to be solved.
Speaker 3: They'll be solved at the central government level and become
Speaker 3: a Beijing problem as opposed to a Guajoor problem or
Speaker 3: a Haylong Jung problem.
Speaker 1: Is there any danger that this starts to snowball in
Speaker 1: a way that affects China's standing in the global economy.
Speaker 3: Thing you're going to see is slower growth at a time,
Speaker 3: so that means Chinese people don't get as rich as fast.
Speaker 3: It makes it harder to create income equality because there's
Speaker 3: just less income. It makes it harder for the government
Speaker 3: to achieve this doubling of income. But it also means
Speaker 3: less Chinese demand for foreign goods. If you're a commodity
Speaker 3: exporting country like Brazil or Australia, or if you're a
Speaker 3: Southeast Asian nation that's looking to move up the value
Speaker 3: chain by selling manufactured goods to China, if Chinese people
Speaker 3: are buying less of those goods, that's less income for you,
Speaker 3: and so there's less growth for the whole world. Basically,
Speaker 3: So the first way that transmits through is to slower
Speaker 3: growth in China, and then the second thing is then
Speaker 3: how that might affect China's standing. Is that China has
Speaker 3: been using its growing economic power, and especially it's both exporting,
Speaker 3: but it's also a huge importer, and it's been using
Speaker 3: that import power to increase its influence around the rest
Speaker 3: of the world. If that goes the opposite direction, you
Speaker 3: may see a change in how much China can influence
Speaker 3: things that are going on in Africa, for example, or
Speaker 3: things that are happening in Southeast Asia. A permanent slowdown
Speaker 3: of Chinese growth is definitely going to change China's global
Speaker 3: standing because a lot of China's global standing is based
Speaker 3: on its economic power.
Speaker 1: Callum and someone who is covering this every day, what
Speaker 1: are you watching for next? How do you see this
Speaker 1: playing out in the months and even years to come.
Speaker 2: The way I'm looking at this is will this be
Speaker 2: another area that poses a threat to She's standing, to
Speaker 2: his relationship with the Chinese people? Does it have the
Speaker 2: potential to become another major issue along the lines of, say,
Speaker 2: for example, the handling of COVID. So from that perspective,
Speaker 2: I'll be looking to see what actions he issues through
Speaker 2: his team of close advisors, and see how successful he
Speaker 2: is in facing up to the problem and implementing and
Speaker 2: devising and implementing a strategy that makes sense, and also
Speaker 2: looking at the reaction. What I tend to look at
Speaker 2: quite a lot is what's happening on the ground. What
Speaker 2: are the protests that are breaking out here, even though
Speaker 2: they're micro and might be fragmented and spread all over
Speaker 2: the country. Who's taking to the streets. Who's going to
Speaker 2: social media complaining what is the characteristics of those people's frustrations.
Speaker 2: So looking both from the macro perspective what is she doing,
Speaker 2: but also looking at the micro level to see if
Speaker 2: we can see any evidence that this is actually playing
Speaker 2: out on the street, because to get that evidence is
Speaker 2: quite tricky, quite challenging, given the fact that there's such
Speaker 2: a clampdown on reporting and news and social media as
Speaker 2: heavily censored.
Speaker 1: James, how do you see this unfolding?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: I think the first thing to be watching for is
Speaker 3: scattered reports of other places facing fiscal difficulties. We saw
Speaker 3: the city of Hohart, which is in a Mongolia, popped
Speaker 3: up about their debt problems on our local website and
Speaker 3: then it was very quickly disappeared. You saw the same
Speaker 3: thing happening in Guajo. A government related think tank put
Speaker 3: out a report saying they were struggling and couldn't pay
Speaker 3: their debts, and then that very quickly got deleted. Those
Speaker 3: look to be basically calls for help from local governments
Speaker 3: to the central government, saying we're struggling, we need help,
Speaker 3: and they seem to be doing that via putting out
Speaker 3: a report it gets a lot of media attention, and
Speaker 3: then it obviously gets deleted, but everyone suddenly away is
Speaker 3: aware of the problem. So I think we should be
Speaker 3: watching for more of those things, and I think those
Speaker 3: things are going to happen more and more as other
Speaker 3: places face these same kind of issues.
Speaker 1: James Column, thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks for listening to us here at The
Speaker 1: Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments at Big Take at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Speaker 1: Vicky Ergolina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Federica Romanello
Speaker 1: is our producer. Associate producer is Zenobsidiki hilde Garcia is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: I'm Wes Kosova. We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.