The following Weibo post wryly commenting on the challenges facing China’s economy, was deleted from Weibo sometime before 3:56AM yesterday, December 29, 2016. “What is coming are three years without hope of reprieve,” the post said. “Sell your property, buy gold, and exercise!”
The post was written by Yu Shenghai (余胜海), a veteran journalist and financial expert who works at Fortune magazine.
The post was a witty elaboration on a separate deleted post also by Yu Shenghai, enumerating the economic problems China could expect to face in 2017, including increased debt defaults, capital outflows and inflation.
Yu’s original post read:
[Yu Shenghai 10 Predictions for China’s economy in 2017] 1. economic growth will slow down in China and recovery will be hard to achieve; 2. investment in property will fall, and property prices will also drop; 3. the real economy will progress with great difficulty, and the manufacturing industry will enter a winter; 4. the trend of RMB devaluation will continue, with devaluation of around 5 percent; 5. there will be no major growth in stock markets, but it will remain a tough year; 6. debt defaults will continue to worsen; 7. inflationary pressures . . .
A Weibo link included in the post above now leads only to a page with an error warning featuring cartoon chickens and the message: “Oh! This problem is urgently being repaired!”
