George Soros says Sell not Buy. As Wall Street reflects on the Rise of the Regulator in China, Soros advises markets to withdraw from China. Politics guides his thinking when he says “Today, the US + China are engaged in a life + death conflict between two systems of governance: repressive and democracy”.
Soros, famous for selling the UK £ and breaking the Bank of England in the 1990’s, goes on to attack 3 Wall Street Opinion Makers; – Larry Fink of BlackRock, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone and John Thornton of Goldman Sachs for “damaging the national security interests of the US and other democracies”
But Soros gets it wrong. He sees China as the old USSR – repressive, over-centralised and dogmatic. Soros fails to see the dynamic at work in China; fails to see the logic of a China keen to encourage the creative initiative of Business on the one hand and at the same time determined through the Regulator to ensure the Billionaires are accountable to the Party and not the reverse.
Something new and significant is taking place in China but those with historical prejudices fail to appreciate the new approach. Soros falls into this category. Soros’s mistake is to view China as a dictatorship presiding over a closed society which it is determined to impose itself on the World. And this at just the time China is forging ahead with further opening up to foreign investment and a deepening of international engagement and integration.
China’s economy is predicted to grow at 6% each year up to 2026 + aims to expand the middle class grouping of more than 400m people. A small example of China’s persistence with the policy of Opening-Up is evidenced by the opening on 20 September 2021 of the Universal Beijing Resort which is the biggest Universal Studios park in the world. The soft opening was on 1 September and visitors have waited in line for up to 2 hours to access the high-tech rides themed on Harry Potter and others. This time Soros has got it very wrong.
