‘We’re Almost Extinct’: China’s Investigative Journalists Are Silenced Under Xi

caijing and ft are the top resources for china insight. aljazeera was until their main jounalist was driven out. cnn might not output much but have had the same guy in beijing for 30+ years. dare i say it, reddit's chinacirclejerk also.

I watched a video with Saul Levmore where he said that China was a bit of a mystery to economists, they have economic growth even though the market is far from as free as in the West. His guess was that since China is so big and local politicians want to advance you get a competition among all the cities and provinces where the local politicians try to show off their fancy hospitals, bridges, factories and such while trying to avoid something embarassing like an outbreak of disease or a huge unemployment rate.

If investigative journalists go however this competition to improve people’s lives would be less important and I think the competition over the favor of president Xi would become the route of choice to advance. That should hurt China’s economic prospects in the long run.