Logan Wright is a Partner at Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s China Markets Research work. He is also a Senior Associate of the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, Logan was head of China research for Medley Global Advisors and a China analyst with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, both in Beijing. Logan’s research focuses on China’s financial system and credit conditions in shaping outcomes within China’s economy, as well as the policies of China’s central bank. He is the author of the forthcoming book Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What it Means for the World, as well as three reports on China’s financial system and the country’s longer-term economic trajectory: Credit and Credibility (2018), The China Economic Risk Matrix (2020), and Grasping Shadows (2023). Logan holds a Ph.D. from the George Washington University, where his dissertation concerned the political factors shaping the reform of China’s exchange rate regime. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Security Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is based in Washington, DC, after living and working in Beijing and Hong Kong for over two decades.
Logan Wright is a Partner at Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s China Markets Research work. He is also a Senior Associate of the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, Logan was head of China research for Medley Global Advisors and a China analyst with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, both in Beijing. Logan’s research focuses on China’s financial system and credit conditions in shaping outcomes within China’s economy, as well as the policies of China’s central bank. He is the author of the forthcoming book Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What it Means for the World, as well as three reports on China’s financial system and the country’s longer-term economic trajectory: Credit and Credibility (2018), The China Economic Risk Matrix (2020), and Grasping Shadows (2023). Logan holds a Ph.D. from the George Washington University, where his dissertation concerned the political factors shaping the reform of China’s exchange rate regime. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Security Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is based in Washington, DC, after living and working in Beijing and Hong Kong for over two decades.
In Episode 500 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Logan Wright, director of China macro and financial sector research at the Rhodium Group and author of Broken China, about why China’s economic troubles are structural rather than cyclical, the product of the largest single-country credit expansion in history, how Beijing’s official GDP figures obscure what is actually happening to Chinese households, local governments, and the property market, why the renminbi is overvalued and capital flight out of China is likely to persist, and what it means for the West to treat the PRC not as a rising power to be managed, but as a declining one.
The first hour focuses on Wright’s central argument that China’s economy is in structural decline, not because its leaders chose austerity or an unwavering commitment to running chronic trade surpluses, but because the largest single-country credit expansion in over a century has exhausted the financial system’s capacity to generate growth, leaving it unable to ignite the domestic demand needed to rebalance both the Chinese and global economies. They discuss why optimism about Beijing’s reform prospects was once rational, how China’s official GDP data obscures what is actually happening on the ground, and why the prevailing narrative that Chinese policymakers retain the capacity to engineer a recovery is, in Wright’s view, fundamentally mistaken.
The second hour turns to the consequences of China’s credit bubble and property market collapse for ordinary households and local governments, the similarities and critical differences between China’s predicament and Japan’s in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the striking historical parallel between the CCP’s political choices and those of Soviet leaders during the USSR’s era of stagnation under Brezhnev. They also discuss the structural demographic headwinds compounding the collapse in Chinese demand, why Wright believes the renminbi is overvalued and poses no credible threat to the dollar’s international role, the implications for America’s strategic competition with the PRC when viewed through the lens of a declining rather than a rising power, and why Wright argues that the threats China poses are deterrable and require coordinated allied action to address.
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Logan Wright is a Partner at Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s China Markets Research work. He is also a Senior Associate of the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, Logan was head of China research for Medley Global Advisors and a China analyst with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, both in Beijing.
Logan’s research focuses on China’s financial system and credit conditions in shaping outcomes within China’s economy, as well as the policies of China’s central bank. He is the author of the forthcoming book Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What it Means for the World, as well as three reports on China’s financial system and the country’s longer-term economic trajectory: Credit and Credibility (2018), The China Economic Risk Matrix (2020), and Grasping Shadows (2023).
Logan holds a Ph.D. from the George Washington University, where his dissertation concerned the political factors shaping the reform of China’s exchange rate regime. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Security Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is based in Washington, DC, after living and working in Beijing and Hong Kong for over two decades.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
