Trap of Overcapacity

Michael Froman’s warning that the Chinese growth model is running out of road offers a stark mirror for my own life. For years, I operated on an export-led growth model of the self. I produced personas, lies, and performances at a rate far exceeding my internal capacity to consume them. I flooded the market of my relationships with cheap, subsidized versions of myself, 30% cheaper than the real thing, because they required no vulnerability, no risk, and no truth. But as Froman notes, the world’s ability to absorb this overcapacity is approaching a breaking point. And so was I.

China’s trade surplus expanded by more than 20% in early 2026, growing three times faster than global goods trade. Similarly, my output of "success" grew far faster than my internal well-being. I was exporting confidence while importing nothing but emptiness. I was producing trustworthiness for clients while operating at a loss in my own integrity. Nearly a third of Chinese industrial firms operate at a loss; for most of my adult life, I was one of those firms. I was busy. I was productive. I was visible. But I was bankrupt.

The political appetite for accepting this flood is finite and shrinking. In my life, the "political appetite" of my family, my ex-partner, and eventually my own conscience shrank until it vanished. The tariffs went up. The barriers were erected. The "Liberation Day" of my breakdown arrived when I stood in the woods, facing the Client, realizing that my export machine could no longer find buyers. I had run out of customers for my lies.

Froman describes an industrial machine that "cannot stop and cannot slow down but that, owing to the limits of demand, cannot keep going." This was my existence for fourteen years. I could not stop lying because I believed it was the only way to survive. I could not slow down because I was afraid of what I would find if I did. But I could not keep going because the human soul has a limit to how much dissonance it can bear. The breaking point was not a choice; it was a mathematical inevitability.

Beijing is now trying to crack down on "involution," the term for intense, self-defeating competition that yields no real progress. I spent my twenties in a state of personal involution. I competed with myself to be smarter, cooler, more detached, more powerful. I cut prices on my morals to win contracts. I engaged in cutthroat price wars with my own conscience. And what did I get? A hollow victory. A market share of loneliness.

The fallout of this model is severe: zombie firms, cascading defaults, and collapsing revenues. I know these terms well. My "zombie firms" were the relationships I kept alive long after they had died. My "cascading defaults" were the promises I broke to myself. My "collapsing revenues" were the dwindling sense of self-worth that left me unable to pay for my own happiness.

But there is a path forward. China must rebalance its economy away from exports and toward consumer spending. It must learn to consume what it produces. For me, this means stopping the export of false selves and starting to consume my own truth. It means finding value in who I am, not just what I can sell. It means building an internal market strong enough to sustain me when the external world puts up tariffs.

"China Shock 2.0" is not just about cars and steel; it is about the displacement of authenticity by efficiency. I displaced my authentic self with an efficient one. And now, I am paying the price.

But I am also learning the lesson. I am dismantling the export machine. I am closing the factories of deception. I am investing in domestic consumption of joy, of peace, of connection.

It will be slower. It will be less flashy. It will not generate a trillion-dollar surplus.

But it will be sustainable.

And in a world running out of road, sustainability is the only destination worth reaching.