Reporting from China: How this trip was different

60 minutes overtime this week on 60 Minutes we report on our trip to China where we did a story on how American businesses are fairing over there we hear the open for business message that you want American companies to be here but we also see the reality of what's happened to a small number of companies what's the reality there is still intellectual property theft from American companies here we spoke with the US ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and he said that overall the Chinese economy is sputtering most economists are now projecting that instead of eight or n% growth they'll be at 2 three 4% growth maybe even lower in the next they support their society if it's that low that's going to be difficult for them and in addition to that Chinese people largely have their wealth in their apartment that they own and if those valuations decrease that's a problem for the economy me if well I mean we longm 10 years ago we did a story about 10 years ago row and row and cities and cities of empty buildings we found what they call a ghost city of new towers with no residence desolate condos and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles and miles and miles and miles of empty Apartments why are they empty I I've heard that they have actually been sold they've all been sold they've all been sold all been sold owned owned by people in China's emerging middle class who now have enough money to invest but few ways to do it well the ripples coming out of that let's say bubble that finally burst have really hurt the Chinese economy people lost life savings that they had put into these apartments that they never were able to live in and therefore they can't spend money they don't have money to spend on consumer goods all of this is rippled out to really hurt growth we spoke to a businessman from Germany yor witka who's been in China for 30 years the developers owe their uh customers that paid up uh to the magnitude of1 trillion us so if I did a down payment on one of these apartments right will I ever see that money no you will not see the money on top of their economic problems they have demographic issues the repercussions of their one child policy are really being felt when we went to the number 10 high school here with its 7,000 students the problem jumped right out at us you can see there are many more boys than girls just look look at all the boys in this break between classes we could plainly see how Stark the imbalance here is for every 100 girls there are 150 boys they have a demographic Cliff ahead they have a very low birth rate that over time maybe not this year or next year into the 2030s is going to be a big economic problem they'll have more people retired and fewer people why is the birth rate so low do you because young people either can't find jobs or are still living with their parents because they don't have the money uh to be married because um young people maybe are choosing a lifestyle where they're not prioritizing kids because they want to prioritize their careers there are a lot of different factors that go into this mind you hi there this was different from the other times I've been there reporting because we didn't have a government minder and this is the Shanghai Tower it's the tallest building in China we went in at the invitation of the US ambassador the Chinese authorities pretty much left us alone except there were cars following us um we saw them but they were not obtrusive they never interfered they didn't come and stop us from doing anything which was unlike what had happened to me in the past I hear there were many more men than women before the police came to sh them and us away I asked them some questions with the help of our interpreter in the past they really wanted us to know that they were watching every step this time it was more subtle we were told that the cameras that are all over the place were watching us we assumed that was true we were told that it's called Soft surveillance nice term we were told that the government try to shut down some of the interviews we had set up with Chinese businesses but in the end we still got to do the reporting on the ones that had agreed to talk to us originally the government of China right now is focused on their economy like a laser they're experiencing economic problems that they have not experienced for 40 years they're worried that American and Japanese and German companies might leave they're worried about foreign direct investment I think they want calmer Waters we have to live with China divorce is not an option

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 368,284

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, pharma

Id: KhBf59PfFBs

Length: 5min 39sec (339 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2024