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Chinese Police show up in bars and give a piss test for marijuana to everybody there and those who fail are sent to jail and if you're a foreigner are deported.

 

Random urine tests now part of Beijing night life

 

This is the kind of shit that China does right about when the world starts to let their guard down about China not being 'China' and feeling safe about traveling to visit.

 

You think "Oh, China, it's so modern now" its easy to forget how ridiculously totalitarian they are. It's not like we're much better, the difference is, they don't even bother with the bullshit pretexts like we do.

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Hell no, where would I get a giant hornet from plus I'm not nuts.

It's just the entire concept of 'flat screen TV' as being relevant to anything anymore.   People still say "flat screen TV" with implied context as though this were 2001 and they cost $5K.

I don't think acceptance of equality has anything to do with it. Rome had no such illusions, they believed in the superiority of races and even in the superiority of family blood lines. Rome was force

This is the kind of shit that China does right about when the world starts to let their guard down about China not being 'China' and feeling safe about traveling to visit.

 

You think "Oh, China, it's so modern now" its easy to forget how ridiculously totalitarian they are.

THIS post is premeditated no?
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The crowds in Hong Kong are larger than last night and so far the police are standing back.

 

All of my Step Daughter's Hong Kong friends are boycotting school and many of them are taking part in the protests. My 19 year old has just gone down to the Chinese Consulate in Toronto to join a protest there.

 

There are 4 main areas of protest in Hong Kong tonight where thousands of people have gathered.

 

BytBPd6CEAAgc82.jpg

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Bubble and China should be considered together.

 

Beijing cannot count on easy money to sustain its economic miracle

 

High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1fec0f14-8489-11e4-bae9-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz3MAKkN5T8

 

 

In most countries the stock market and the economy move up and down together in a happy union, but in China they have often been distant relatives. That split is widening like never before, with the economy continuing to slow but the stock market taking off, all of which hints at deep dysfunction in the financial system.

 

Just three months ago the main Chinese stock market was dormant. Since then it has surged 30 per cent and has started to show signs of the manic trading that normally does not appear until a bull market has been gathering steam for years. On some days this month, the trading volumes on the stock exchanges in China have exceeded those of all the others in the world combined. Prices are swinging wildly, with some of them gaining 10 per cent then losing it all and more within minutes — often in the absence of any news about the company or the economy. Showing classic symptoms of a mania, Chinese investors are borrowing heavily to buy stocks and flipping them quickly. On average, they are holding them for barely two weeks, compared with four months in the US.

 

Article Continued At Link Above

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I read an article awhile back on Zerohedge where it talked about armys of workers that work directly for Alibaba buying stuff.....and then returning it. That is the job, nothing more and nothing less with the idea being that they can always point to high sales numbers.

 

Which seemed silly to me, it would be easier to just lie. Who knows? Zerohedge publishes all kinds of crap.

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I read an article awhile back on Zerohedge where it talked about armys of workers that work directly for Alibaba buying stuff.....and then returning it. That is the job, nothing more and nothing less with the idea being that they can always point to high sales numbers.

 

Which seemed silly to me, it would be easier to just lie. Who knows? Zerohedge publishes all kinds of crap.

 

Usually safest to just assume anything on Zerohedge is either batshit or an outright lie

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Huge numbers of ordinary people are flooding the market using big leverage. What could go wrong.

 

U.S. Dot-Com Bubble Was Nothing Compared to Today’s China Prices

 

The use of margin debt to trade mainland shares has climbed to all-time highs, while investors are opening stock accounts at a record pace. More than two-thirds of new investors have never attended or graduated from high school, according to a survey by China’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.
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Panic, invincibility and blame in China's stock market

 

 

 

 

 

If the underlying fear is damage to the real economy wouldn't it be better tackled by tax cuts or public spending increases?

 

But that is not the deepest fear. The government's terror is being seen to be incompetent and even impotent.

 

This is a matter of confidence which goes well beyond the stock market.

 

Speculators have called Beijing's bluff. The stock market has become a classic "too big to fail" problem, which is where step two comes in:

Look invincible

 

 

Beijing sees its own credibility as the thin red line between order and chaos.

 

If confidence in the stock market fails, might it also fail in the banking system, the already fragile economy and ultimately in the management of all three?

 

The fact is that no one knows how much debt is out there or ultimately who stands behind it when the lenders cave in. Add to uncertainty the risk of public outrage.

 

Anyone who invested in shares before March is still sitting on a profit, but that still leaves a lot of people who have lost their shirt.

 

After all, 12 million new trading accounts were opened in May alone, the majority in the hands of buyers with little education, even less trading experience and whose stock market adventure was funded by borrowing.

 

The first rule of governing China is to keep angry people off the streets. Hence the paradox of a government introducing panic measures in order to look all powerful.

 

Of course, government taking control is not what China's stock markets are supposed to be about.

 

Markets require regulation but at the end of the day they need to develop effective feedback, co-ordination and a mature assessment of risk.

Government infantilising investors by galloping in to ensure the index stays up is not a market outcome.

 

Issuing orders to market players to buy this, hold that and freeze the next thing is a retreat to command economics.

 

No wonder one state newspaper has declared the stock market "a battlefield".

 

But what constitutes victory? And who exactly is the enemy? This leads us to step three:

Find someone to blame

 

A few bad apples? At the end of last week the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced an investigation into market manipulation. After months of suspicious trading patterns, the timing of this move will provoke a hollow laugh in some quarters.

 

Foreigners? On social media, rumours swirled last week about overseas investors undermining the market by betting against Chinese shares via stock futures.

 

But the China Financial Futures Exchange has already denied these rumours. Chinese markets are largely insulated from global pressures and foreigners are marginal players however tempting a target.

 

A fall guy? Many investors are calling for the regulator's head. The chief of China's market regulator is Xiao Gang and his days must now be numbered.

 

But the real blame should lie squarely with the central government.

 

Its strategy, clear for the best part of a year, has been to pump up the stock market so that it could earn billions by selling shares in state owned enterprises, and at the same time make the public feel paper-rich again after the languishing property market had made them feel poor.

 

On this arithmetic, government and its state owned enterprises could offload debt, and Chinese citizens could be persuaded to save less and spend more thereby energising the rest of the economy.

 

But this was government gaming the market for opportunistic reasons rather than building a healthy stock market for the long term.

 

Beijing knew better than anyone that the surge was driven by borrowing, with speculative bets made not on any clearheaded assessment of company prospects or earnings but on gaming government hype.

 

In March, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China said: "A buoyant market on a solid footing could be a reliable funding source."

 

But what about a buoyant market on a shaky footing? Economic growth in the first quarter fell to 7% year-on-year.

 

And there was no sign of a turnaround in the second quarter. Until 12 June, stocks galloped ahead regardless.

 

All along sober heads warned that Chinese stock markets were stepping onto a "treadmill to hell".

 

Reform guru Wu Jinglian called the market "a casino where one player can see the cards of the other players".

 

Hu Shuli, editor of the financial journal Caixin cautioned against "pushing a 'mad bull' stock market to solve fundamental issues".

"Follow the trend until you find yourself in a coffin," thundered one market sceptic.

 

But we are where we are.

 

At an important crossroads where Beijing has chosen to flout its own reform agenda and move against the market. Perhaps there was an alternative to panic, invincibility and blame.

 

A confident Chinese government could have elected to hold its nerve; honour its pledge "to make markets the decisive force" in the economy and think about what it would do in the real crisis which threatens over bad loans and property.

 

Is it too late? Probably.

 

And worse, the events of the past 10 days have undermined reform, undermined confidence and made the real crisis substantially more likely.

 

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