Jim Rogers on Chinese Economy Hard Landing

Jim Rogers: Some parts of the Chinese economy are going to have a hard landing. The Chinese for two years now have been tightening up. They have raised interest rates six times. They have raised reserve requirements a dozen times. Just recently they started to loosen this up a little bit but they are trying. They are trying to bring down real estate, they are trying to make real estate developers go bankrupt so you are going to have a hard landing to use your terms in things like property in China. But other parts of the Chinese economy are going to continue to boom: water treatment, agriculture, farmers are not going to know that the real estate speculators in Beijing and Shanghai are going bankrupt because they are working too hard and making too much money so you are going to have sectors of the Chinese economy with serious problems but it’s not the whole Chinese economy. It’s not like it was here. Some have argued that China has taken the first steps to start pumping more money into the system by cutting reserve requirements, that they will continue to do so in 2012 especially when the government transitions leadership in late 2012, do you think it’s going to happen? Rogers: Well, you are right. They have loosened up twice in the last month or two. I wouldn’t if I was China but I am not China. It looks as though they are going to start loosening up. I guess the real estate speculators are calling up and saying save me, save me, save me and they are starting to listen. - in The Street