Stephen McDonnell
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
A lot of people would be scratching their heads looking at where the world's going at the moment with the way the Trump administration is throwing trade relations everywhere into chaos and wonder how can the Chinese government be this confident.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
I've just come from the great hall of the people and it'd be crazy to be ignoring the elephant in the room. I think every Chinese person who heard that speech would know what he's referring to there. I mean, why is this especially a problem for China? I mean, just have a look at the Chinese economy. Huge areas where they've got to deal with these problems.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
The ongoing property crisis, youth unemployment, local government debt, sluggish consumer confidence. Chinese people don't have enough confidence in the economy, saving too much, not spending enough. Now, the areas where the economy is doing pretty well, electric vehicles, solar panels, new tech. People all know about DeepSeek and TikTok. This is all export-driven stuff.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
And so what the Chinese government doesn't need now is a renewed trade war with the US, or anyone else for that matter, when these bright light areas of the economy are reliant on exports. And yet they're still saying they're going to achieve around 5% growth this year.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
A lot of people would be scratching their heads looking at where the world's going at the moment with the way the Trump administration is throwing trade relations everywhere into chaos and wonder how can the Chinese government be this confident. I mean, for example... One thing it really needs to do is to get domestic consumption going.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
Interestingly, and we look at the tea leaves here in China, the word consumption was mentioned 31 times in the speech today as opposed to 21 times last year. Now, you might think, well, why does that matter? Well, it shows that this problem of building up greater consumer confidence is at the forefront of the minds of the Communist Party.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
And, you know, a decade ago, they said there was going to be this shift towards consumerism. an economy reliant much more on domestic consumer confidence, domestic consumer spending. But it hasn't panned out that way.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
To attempt to encourage this, they've had financial incentives to switch out your old clapped-out car, to swap your old appliances for new ones, cash for clunkers, as it's being referred to. They're going to allow a greater proportion of the GDP to be caught up in debt, so the deficit-to-GDP ratio has gone up. and yet not really much change to China's social safety net provisions.
Global News Podcast
Trump tells Congress he's 'just getting started'
Many economists are saying the way to fix this is to put more money into the hands of ordinary households, and that way they'll spend some more. And yet really, this time round, not a lot on that front, and so there's still a lot more work to do.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
The scene in front of me is being repeated right across China today, and in fact every day. Parents wait outside the gates of a school to pick up their kids. They feel the need to protect their children and don't want to risk anything going wrong if they were to make their own way home on, say, public transport.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
But such fears have only heightened lately, with schools being targeted by those seeking to violently take out revenge on society for a range of grievances. This is all making for some pretty grim introspection, as people here ask what's going wrong with Chinese society that's causing such bloody, desperate attention-seeking.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
Other parents tell us they're not so worried because the number of recent mass attacks in China has been statistically small. George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University's China Centre, says that the relatively small number of mass killings doesn't reflect the overall build-up of tensions, which seems undeniable.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
What are being referred to here as revenge on society attacks are not new in China. But this year, there have been so many that they've been hard to keep track of. On 11 November, there was dismay as footage spread of a 62-year-old man driving his car into those exercising outside a sports stadium in Zhuhai, killing at least 35 people who'd been jogging or dancing outdoors.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
Police said he'd been unhappy with his divorce settlement. Days later, another car was being driven into children outside their primary school in Chengde, Hunan. After the vehicle stopped, locals smashed in its windows, then bashed the driver and held the man down until police could get there. And on and on the list goes.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
Lynette Ong is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
With tension increasing in Chinese society, the government has also been criticised for not providing enough counselling services for those in distress. People feel they can't turn to the courts because they're seen as inefficient and only loyal to the party. With state-controlled media, it mostly won't air people's stories if they make high-level officials look bad.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
For now, the stress points seem likely to keep opening even wider. The only question is just how much pressure this might bring to bear on social order.
Global News Podcast
Putin apologises over plane crash, without saying Russia is at fault
They can enforce their rules, that's fine by me, and my response is then I'm out.