China has been reduced to issuing statistics that cannot be true. China claims that it is still growing at an 8 percent rate, but this is not possible when they admit that electricity production grew only 2.6 percent in 1998. If China were really growing this fast, Hong Kong, the economic capital of southern China, would not be contracting at a 5 percent rate, as it is. Investment banks would not be going broke all across China, as they are. Investment banks do not go broke in the midst of a strong 8 percent growth.
Growth covers up mistakes.
The Asian billionaires are disappearing as insects in the first frost. Forty-one Japanese billionaires have been reduced to nine. Elsewhere the declines are even sharper. In the 1990s Europe has not had the meltdown of Japan, but its growth rate has been below that of the United States. More importantly, it is a leader in none of the new high tech, high growth industries.