Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Michael Pettis Profile picture
@michaelxpettis
Aug 19, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
Yes, agrees. Ironically democracy seems historically to be “in crisis” precisely when it is most proving its superiority to other systems, i.e. when it is managing us through a difficult, messy adjustment. The books cited here seem to worry that democracy is in trouble because...
...the electorate isn’t just, disinterested and well-informed, but I think this would only be a problem if the purpose of a political system were to express deep political truths. In fact I’d argue that nothing is more dangerous than such a political system: what we need is...
...one that allows our institutions to adjust, however clumsily, as conditions change, and unfortunately because there are times, like today, when change is extremely messy, chaotic and hard to predict, the best we can hope for is to adjust in a messy, chaotic and...
...unpredictable way. Like in the 1930s and the 1970s, I think the populism and “crisis of democracy” that we are experiencing today is just democracy doing what it is supposed to do. It is the non-democracies that are not adjusting, and while this may look like purpose and...
...stability, in fact I think it just reflects institutional rigidity. Jefferson is supposed to have wanted a bloody revolution every fifty years to drive institutional change, but while that may be more aesthetically pleasing, perhaps our way is better.
tabletmag.com/jewish-news-an…
I meant to paste this:
monticello.org/site/research-…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Michael Pettis

Michael Pettis Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @michaelxpettis

Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 18
1/4
 Bloomberg: "“Even with strong determination and sufficient resources, transforming China’s economy into one driven by consumption and services will take years,” Goldman said. “With a more reluctant, measured approach, it could take decades.”"
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2/4
 Goldman is right, of course, unless a debt crisis, or a serious acceleration of trade war, forces a much faster, disruptive adjustment. While the latter might happen, the former is, for now at least, pretty unlikely.
3/4
 A long adjustment, however, means a Japanese-style adjustment over two or three decades, in which consumption growth continues at more or less the same pace it had in the past while GDP growth drops sharply, and investment growth goes negative.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 18
1/10
SCMP: "Kenya has reached a preliminary trade deal with China for duty-free exports of key products including coffee, tea and cut flowers – a major step towards narrowing the East African nation’s long-standing trade gap with Beijing."
via @scmpnewssc.mp/gg0zg?utm_sour…
2/10
This kind of incrementalist thinking is one of the reasons why global trade is so unbalanced and so poorly understood. China does not run a trade surplus with Kenya because of tariffs on coffee, tea and cut flowers.
3/10
It runs a massive trade surplus with the world because of equally-massive domestic imbalances. Reducing tariffs on Kenyan coffee, tea and cut flowers will have almost no effect at all on China's domestic imbalances, and so no affect on China's need for a trade surplus.
Read 10 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 15
1/4
 Aggregate financing in China, the most widely-used proxy for total debt, ended 2025 at RMB 442.12 trillion, an 8.3% increase over last year's outstanding amount. This is a relatively small increase in total debt compared to earlier years.
english.news.cn/20260115/3e5af…
2/4
 But of course nominal GDP growth is also much lower, so the RMB 35.6 trillion increase in aggregate financing in 2025 represents a 12 percentage-point increase in China's debt-to-GDP ratio. This is higher than the 11 percentage-point increases in 2024 and 2023.
3/4
 China's debt data isn't always comparable over time, but I think only the COVID year of 2020 saw a higher increase in China's debt-to-GDP ratio, and because this was partially reversed in 2021, the average annual increase over the two years was only ten percentage points.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 9
1/5
 NYT: "The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services shrank to $29.4 billion in October, down from $48.1 billion the prior month. The figure was the lowest monthly trade deficit recorded since June 2009."
nytimes.com/2026/01/08/bus…
2/5
 If this persists, it may be the most important factor for those thinking about what is likely to happen in 2026. In a three-month period during which the Chinese trade surplus has surged, the US trade deficit has declined.
3/5
 Simple arithmetic tells us that the difference must be reflected in the trade balances of other countries. Some of this will have showed up initially as rising trade deficits among developing countries, but this will ultimately be limited by their abilities to finance them.
Read 5 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 9
1/8
 Very interesting CNA article on Beijing's strategic pivot towards upgrading the quality of China's existing housing stock. It turns out that much of its housing stock, including much that was built in recent years, is of unacceptable quality.
channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/chin…
2/8
 CNA: "“This strategic pivot to ‘good housing’ is fundamentally about rebalancing the economy – shifting from speculative inventory to quality living,” Lin Han-Shen, China country director at The Asia Group, told CNA. “Restoring household confidence is central".
3/8
 The article also cites the Conference Board’s Zhang Yuhan who warned that "the shift towards higher-quality housing is “likely to support confidence gradually”, but cautioned it does not resolve oversupply or developer liquidity pressures on its own."
Read 8 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Jan 7
1/6
 People often say that the problem with the global trading system is mainland China, but that's not true. Taiwan, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Singapore and many others have run similar positions. The problem is with the global trading system itself.
2/6
 As long as countries like the US (and the EU soon?) continue to accommodate global saving imbalances, our current trading system allows for a kind of Kalecki paradox in which individual economies can be rewarded for behavior that undermines growth in the system as a whole.
3/6
 Keynes explained this in 1944: economies that repress domestic demand in order to subsidize their manufacturing reduce overall global demand, but are able nonetheless to grow more quickly by taking a larger share of other countries' demand.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(