HMM: “A Tectonic Shift In China’s Economy Has Largely Gone Unnoticed By Investors.”

Now it is the Wall Street’s Journal’s turn to bring attention to this topic, calling it a “tectonic shift” in China’s economy, which has largely gone unnoticed by investors, and which is “quietly beginning to upend the global financial system.”

A key driver behind China’s declining current account is that after having long been the world’s heavyweight saver and a huge buyer of foreign assets like Treasurys, the world’s most populous nation is now a big spender, and in early 2018, China got more of its growth from consumption than the U.S., the global king of consumer spending where some 70% of economic growth is due to consumer spending. And as China’s increasingly wealthy population spends more at home and abroad, its total trade surplus with the rest of the world has shriveled to a fraction of its former size.

In other words, China is rapidly becoming the next US.

If they’re us, who’s going to finance Washington’s spending addiction?