George Soros Sees Xi Jinping Being Weakened By Economic Crisis

China is facing an economic crisis after a real estate boom that ended the year going up in smoke, according to investor George Soros, and President Xi Jinping will fail in his bid to control Beijing for keeps, Charles Riley reported for CNN Business.

Photo Insert: George Soros was quoted as saying that Xi “tried to impose total control, but he failed.”

The billionaire investor spoke at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, and argued that President Xi Jinping may not be able to restore confidence in the troubled industry, which has been hit by a series of defaults by developers and falling prices for land and apartments.

Reporting for Nikkei Asia late on Feb. 2, Hiroko Nishimura quoted Soros as saying the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant poses risks to President Xi's grip on power. Soros added that Xi “tried to impose total control, but he failed.”

Soros argued that China's real estate boom was based on an "unsustainable" model that benefited local governments and encouraged people to invest the bulk of their savings in property. Government policies designed to curb the boom made it difficult for indebted real estate behemoth Evergrande to pay its debts, he added.

The developer is reeling under more than $300 billion of total liabilities, including about $19 billion in offshore bonds held by international asset managers and private banks on behalf of their clients. Evergrande has been scrambling for months to raise cash to repay lenders.

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