Xing Fushan sells electric scooters in the suburbs of Beijing and understands little about high finance but has strong opinions about Chinese purchases of bonds issued by crisis-hit European countries.
“China shouldn’t buy European bonds because the US can’t even pay their debt, so in the end, China will lose money,” the 30-year-old salesman says. “With so much money, wouldn’t it be nice if the government could do some real good things for the [Chinese] people?”
The idea that China might be willing or even able to bail out debt-laden Europe by purchasing huge amounts of potentially worthless bonds is one that elicits disdain from most parts of Chinese society.