Crackdown on capitalists didn't start recently. It's been going on for a long time, and often just amounts to a war among CCP factions, as invariably different

Crackdown on capitalists didn't start recently. It's been going on for a long time, and often just amounts to a war among CCP factions, as invariably different guanxi networks are allied with different party bigwigs. Prior to Deng's reforms, Mao was persecuting anyone with a hint of capitalist influence, often seizing family wealth and sending them for re-education to work in the countryside. I don't buy this decadence angle, this seems like an argument from someone with a religious axe to grind. The reality is, China has serious systemic economic problems built up from mismanagement and corruption. They've got a population of 400 million migrant workers who used to make decent money with the construction boom, but now face an apocalypse as the real estate market may implode, many of them will resort to being delivery drivers, etc. They've got a looming demographic timebomb, as the one child policy is going to make China end up with a significantly older population than their competitors -- all of which will heavily impact surplus productivity need to take care of them. Then there's debt, China's "on the books" debt-to-GDP is 270% but no one knows the real figure. Then there's the education crisis, as China has been graduating far more advance degree candidates than they need, which has lead to high unemployment among college graduates, and the absurdity of people with masters degrees working on the assembly line in factories. There's also a huge "tofu-dreg" construction debt as a lot of buildings and infrastructure were built by contractors who scammed away money and used substandard materials. Who knows how much it will cost to fix this stuff. Xi Jinping is aware of all of these looming crises, and so all of the recent control mechanisms are essentially an attempt at self protection for the CCP to prevent blame, because when the shit hits the fan, they want to write the story that the public reads about who is really at fault for bank failures, and real estate failures, etc. It'll be a nationalist populist -- fascist story that lays the blame on capitalists, international actors, anyone but party corruption and mismanagement.