It has been documented that china constructs "ghost cities" no one lives in or visits to artificially boost their GDP.
If that mentality extends to their economic and financial policy, circumstances are likely worse than they appear.
For years there have been concerns over china imploding from rampant state corruption by politicians and beaureaucrats.
It happened to the soviet union under Gorbachev. It may not be very surprising if history repeats itself.
I've seen documentaries of that. It was both sad and infuriating. It's all a massive waste of resources while people in the country's interior still remain poorer than those in the coast. What's disturbing is it seem to be the attitude of officials there. They for example did their best to hide the development of SARS, only admitting when people were already infected.
Both with pandemics and economics, they'd drag us down with them if they keep doing this.
Since you mention Soviets, I can't help but remember a scene I saw in a documentary. The Russians visited and the Chinese showed them their fields, crops so thick that you need to place planks to walk through the farms. It was all a lie.. they just stuffed the plot show to the visitors. Ironically the documentary was about Mao's artificial famine.
