One of the hottest apps in China asks a surprisingly grim question:

Are you dead yet?

Earlier this year, the app called si le ma climbed to the top of China’s paid-download charts. Once a day, users tap a large green button.

Miss two days in a row, and the app automatically emails a designated contact asking them to physically check on you.

That’s the entire product. Basic proof of life.

The app’s popularity reflects a changing China. According to the country’s 2020 census, 25.4% of Chinese households consist of a single person, up from 14.5% in 2010.

But for decades, China was synonymous with growth and opportunity.

Young workers poured into cities. “College graduates skipped from job to job, sometimes four or five a year, confident that something better would come along,” says an article at Foreign Policy.

“Opportunity was cheap and failures easy to abandon; if you opened one successful restaurant, why not open another six the next year and then 60 and then 600?”

Paradigm’s macro expert Jim Rickards notes: “[China’s] size and performance fed numerous narratives to the effect that the 21st century would be the ‘Chinese Century,’ and that the Chinese economy would surpass the U.S. economy in GDP.”

Today, that confidence seems increasingly misplaced.

China is still the world’s second-largest economy and a manufacturing powerhouse. Yet the country’s economic momentum has slowed dramatically from the breakneck pace that defined the past four decades.

“Chinese growth this year will come in closer to 4.5%, and even that number is probably overstated due to wasted investment that still counts as GDP,” Jim writes.

For most countries, 4.5% growth would be enviable.

For China, it’s a signal that the golden years are probably over.

Your Rundown for Friday, June 26, 2026...

The “Chinese Century” Shows Its Age

Since the early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party has effectively operated under an unspoken bargain with citizens: Stay out of politics and prosperity will continue.

Economic growth, in fact, became the strongest source of the party’s legitimacy — far more powerful than communist ideology itself.

But that social contract has become harder to maintain as prosperity has slowed.

And real estate sits at the center of the problem.

“The property market has collapsed, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has to pretend prices are higher than they actually are,” says Jim.

“This is because 70% of household wealth is tied up in housing.”

By 2019, some real estate in central Beijing was selling at prices comparable to Manhattan, despite local salaries remaining around one-tenth of those earned in New York.

That disconnect was never sustainable.

Now President Xi Jinping faces a difficult challenge. He needs consumers to spend more and save less.

Instead, several years of economic uncertainty and falling property values have encouraged Chinese households to save even more aggressively.

“The [housing] market is down 50% or more,” Jim continues. “If 70% of household wealth in the U.S. declined by 50% in a matter of a few years, there would be riots in the streets.”

As if that weren't enough, another challenge looms in the background. “China's population is projected to decline dramatically over the coming decades,” Jim adds.

“Absent a productivity miracle, which is not in the offing, that implies a major drag on economic growth and national power.”

Most readers already know China’s birth rate is declining. What’s easier to miss is how these problems reinforce one another.

A weaker housing market makes consumers more cautious. Slower growth makes young couples less likely to have children. An aging population creates additional pressure on future growth.

None of this means China will vanish. A nation of roughly 1.4 billion people growing at 3% or 4% annually will remain a major economic and geopolitical force.

But that’s very different from the vision that dominated headlines for much of the past two decades.

“China will not surpass the United States,” Jim concludes today. “It may not even keep up with India.”

But investors have a habit of mistaking powerful trends for permanent ones.

They did it with Japan in the 1980s. They did it with U.S. housing before the financial crisis. And they did it with China, too.

Market Rundown for Friday, June 26, 2026

S&P 500 futures are down 0.35% to 7,395.

Oil’s down almost 3% to $69.75 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is up 0.40% to $4,064 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is up 0.40%, just under $60K.