The Chicken Little-Henny Penny story is a fable about a chicken that believes the world is ending. The phrase “The sky is falling!” features prominently in the story and is now a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.
Chicken Little’s warnings or predictions of calamity, especially without justification, dates from 1895.
Because of this, the tale has become politicized and one example appeared on ZeroHedge.com when Tyler Durden submitted this post, “Chinese Real Estate Bubble Pops: Beijing Real Estate Prices Plunge 27% In One Month”.
Durden writes, “Prices of new homes in China’s capital plunged 26.7% month-on-month in March, the Beijing News reported Tuesday, citing data from the city’s Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission.”
Durden says, “IF” the pummeling in the Beijing real estate market shifts to other cities not only is the Chinese tightening regime over, but the SHCOMP (?) in the next few weeks could get very interesting as people understand the world’s biggest marginal bubble has popped.”
“IF” I had a dollar for every time I’ve read a “Sky is Falling” prediction of China’s economy, I’d take my wife out to dinner, shopping at Nordstrom’s and a movie on the weekend.
China’s real estate market only represents about 15% of China’s GDP while in America, that number is more than 70% of GDP, which explains why America is in the cellar with its economy and China is still growing but just slower.
Meanwhile, Tory Capital.com reports “China’s First Quarter 2011 GDP Rises 9.7 Percent,” while Mostly Economics.com compares that to the US annual rate of 3.1%.
A better, possibly more informed comparison between China and America’s economies may be found at Heritage.org where Derek Scissors, Ph.D. writes, “Its (China) raw population means that the PRC will likely pass the U.S. at some point after a resumption of market reform.”
However, Scissors says for that to happen, “The 2012 Communist Party Congress (must) nullify actions by the 2002 Party Congress and restore Deng Xiaoping’s economic model—this would enable roughly two more decades of rapid growth, perhaps in the 7 percent to 8 percent range, then gently decreasing to the 5 percent to 6 percent range over time. China would then surpass the U.S.” as the world’s largest economy.
Back to Durden’s Chicken Little-Henny Penny statement. The drop in “new housing prices” in Beijing may be a response to complaints from the people that prices were out of reach of many. Instead of a bubble bursting, the Party may have let some air out so it would not explode as it did in the US in 2008.
Discover The Fear of Mao Buying the World
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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