[Azred]

I always treat any news story from China as suspect and probably edited by the government, either in part or the whole thing.

The first question to ask here is this: since the lecture was supposed to be under media blackout, who risked their life to record it? Why did they risk their life to record it?

The second question to ask is: how do we know this isn't manufactured disinformation coming directly from the Chinese government? "Let's put out a story saying our economy is in really bad shape, causing people to act as if it is, but then laugh at them because things aren't as bad as we said they are." As Memnoch noted, there is no way to determine the true status of the Chinese economy because all the statistics have been scrubbed by the government.

No matter how tightly the government might try to control the economy, economies have lives of their own. At some point, they will be in a recession or depression and then their high degree of control will hurt them badly. On the flip side of the coin, if the economy is progressing as they say it is then at some point the average Chinese worker is going to start wanting more freedoms and purchasing ability like we had here in the 1910s through 1940s. When China's social freedom movement begins, though, it is going to be a bloodbath.