A lot of middle-class people in China are unhappy right now. For more than a decade, many Chinese put their money into buying apartments instead of putting their savings in banks that paid virtually no interest. This created a huge housing bubble. Many people rode it up and then rode it down when the government tightened real estate lending in 2020.

So they are hoarding their cash because their real estate profits are gone but the government pension and health care payments are meager. Everyone has to save for a rainy day.

Won’t somebody please think of the bourgeoisie’s profits!

As my colleague Keith Bradsher just reported, the economic slowdown is depriving the Beijing government of the very tax revenues it needs to stimulate the economy and subsidize “the export industries that are driving economic growth but could be hurt by tariffs.”

NYT economists still don’t know how fiat money works.