--:-- John Bickley: The threat of China overtaking the U.S. as the world's leading economic power may be reversing. Is the communist country in danger of an economic collapse? And who is really winning the trade war?
--:-- John Bickley: China comes up the learning curve. If we don't go faster up the learning curve, we stand to lose market share and ultimately be relatively poor. I'm Daily Wire, Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's September 9th, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- John Bickley: This issue of free speech is at the core of what defines our society in the United States, and without it, these institutions will fail. A new report found that a prestigious university and top choice for many incoming freshmen has been ranked the worst school on campus free speech.
--:-- John Bickley: What factors contributed to its last place rating? And schools across the country have been seeing a rise in the number of absent students post-COVID. We take a closer look at the numbers.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: After years of booming growth, China's economy has slowed considerably in recent years, weighed down by an aging workforce in a real estate sector in turmoil.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here with more on what's behind the downturn and what it means for the global economy is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, so throughout the 2000s, China's economy was expanding at just a torrid pace as the country leveraged their enormous workforce to dominate global exports and manufacturing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As a result, the assumption among many economists was that China was a sure bet to overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy. As recently as 2020, most projections had them overtaking America within the decade, potentially as early as 2030.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But that rosy outlook has really taken a hit as China's economy has entered a major slump. For context, for most of the past four decades, China's GDP growth sat in the double digits.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But it's now slowed significantly, falling to 3% expansion last year and dipping even lower in the first half of 2023.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Right, so some major downward trends there. What's behind this slowdown?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, the largest contributor right now comes in the real estate sector. Throughout the last few decades, hundreds of millions of Chinese moved from rural areas into cities, creating seemingly endless demand for new housing projects.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That decades-long housing boom led to the real estate sector accounting for one quarter of all economic activity in the country.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But the sector has now become a major liability after excessive borrowing from developers who are now unable to pay off their debts.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As a result, local governments, which have historically relied on land sales for revenue, have been cutting services because they're simply bringing in less money from those sales.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And even more concerning, a number of the country's largest property developers, which employ hundreds of thousands, if not millions in the country, are teetering on the edge of default.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For more on that, I spoke with David Goldman, deputy editor of the Asia Times and a fellow at the Claremont Institute.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He said much of the real estate crisis comes down to action taken by the Chinese Communist Party.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, for the past two years, Beijing has been squeezing the property market by cutting off credit from the state banks and imposing restrictions on homebuyers, higher down payments and similar measures.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And finally, a year ago, that began cracking. The Chinese have 70 of their household assets in property The stock market been a very poor performer And for one thing at least in some cities housing prices are exorbitant and out of the reach of any normal family.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And secondly, the rate of migration has to slow because they've already moved most of the people that they can move.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, remember, this all comes at a time when Western nations, especially the U.S., have made an intentional effort to reduce their economic reliance on China.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And that is clearly having an impact. Last month, China's overall exports fell at the fastest rate in years, and new data released this week by the Census Bureau showed that China's share of American imports has fallen to its lowest level since 2006.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And that's not likely to turn around anytime soon. President Biden has signed a number of executive orders that restrict American venture capital and private equity firms from investing in Chinese tech like AI and semiconductors.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We've seen a similar commitment from European leaders as well. As a result, China's trade surplus with the EU has contracted by 32% this year.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So another major downturn there. But according to Goldman, those export figures can at times be deceiving.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He says Chinese goods are still making their way into the U.S., but they're first coming through countries like Mexico and India.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: A number of studies, including one by Asia Times, but there's very good work done by the World Bank and others, show that Chinese exports have not really declined.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And restoring has been much more a matter of rearranging the deck fears. So China is exporting a great deal more to Vietnam, Mexico, Brazil, and India, and India, Vietnam, Brazil, and Mexico are exporting more to the United States.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In effect, a great deal of our friend-shoring countries are simply white-labeling Chinese goods to some of the final assembly before shipping them on to the United States.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So the Chinese content of American imports has not declined at all. The labels have declined as the Chinese rearrange trade flows to get around tariffs and other problems for their imports to the United States.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Definitely a complex game being played here.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. Look for his full interview with David Goldman this afternoon.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: A new study from an organization that ranks universities based on their promotion of free speech concluded that America's most prestigious university has created one of the most anti-free speech environments in the nation.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Here to give us the details is Daily Wire contributor Charlotte Pence-Bond.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Hi, John. Yes, so it seems as if videos of protesters at college speeches are especially common lately. But this new series of surveys shows just how bad things have become on some campuses.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: The findings come from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which uses information like student insights and actions of faculty and staff to create free speech scores.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Among over 200 schools reviewed, Harvard came in dead last, earning a description of abysmal from FIRE. It got a score of zero out of 100.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: All right, so not a single point. Right, but the Ivy League school actually scored even lower. Its real score was negative 10.69, but the group gave them a zero instead.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: At the top of the free speech rankings was Michigan Technological University, which was rated the number one school for free speech on campus.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: In the survey some schools were also given a warning level because the group says they quote have policies that clearly and consistently state that it prioritizes other values over a commitment to freedom of speech
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: All right, so Harvard, which usually tops most lists, came in last in this one. Why is that? Well, one key reason is that nine researchers and professors at Harvard were under pressure to be disciplined or fired because of something they'd stated.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And seven of them were, in fact, punished professionally.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: The survey's findings also discuss what percentage of students nationwide think it's okay to use violence to get a campus speaker to stop talking. 73% said it is never okay.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: That's down from last year when 80% said so. So more than a quarter appear open to using violence.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: At Oberlin College, just 53% of students said using violence is never acceptable.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Notably, swimmer Riley Gaines recently experienced this. She has spoken out against letting biological males compete alongside women and said earlier this year, that she was hit multiple times and ambushed and cornered by protesters when she was speaking at San Francisco State.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: But the survey found that this kind of attitude about speech isn't consistent across political backgrounds.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: 72% of students said they were against letting a conservative speaker come to the school, conditional on the topic of discussion.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: But far fewer, only 43%, were against a liberal speaker coming to campus.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And this is feeding into a general feeling that a lot of students have that they're not free themselves to speak up.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Right. What specifically do students feel censored about? Is it mostly politics? It seems that way.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: For example, almost half of students said it's hard to talk about abortion at school.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And the ideas that are most difficult to talk about were abortion, gun control, racial inequality, and transgender rights, according to the foundation.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Last year, 64 schools got free speech grades of below average, poor, very poor, or abysmal. This year, that number was up a few at 73.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: The same goes for scores of slightly above average. Last year, 39 schools got that score, but this year that number was 47.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: All right, so it's sort of a mixed bag, but some of them are definitely getting worse.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And there's reason to believe that this is really impacting students, correct?
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Yeah, there is. Students are really feeling the pressure of these environments.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: 26% of students said they self-censor at least a couple of times each week when they're talking with friends.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And a quarter said they're more likely to filter what they say now than when they arrived at college.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: And it could have downstream effects. College enrollment has been declining in recent years.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: There was an 8% drop from 2019 to 2022.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Earlier this year, college co-eds testified before a congressional subcommittee on the topic of free speech on college campuses.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Here's Josiah Joner, a sophomore at Stanford. This environment has exiled free expression and debate outside of the classroom, the very spot where it is most needed and essential.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: It is my hope that future students at our colleges do not continue to experience the degradation of free speech and face the threats that may come with sharing their opinions.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Well, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes even more of a consideration for students as they look at schools.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Charlotte, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Charlotte Pence-Bond: Thanks for having me.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Daily Wire contributor Charlotte Pence-Bond.
--:-- John Bickley: School lockdowns ended years ago but concerns continue about the number of students choosing not to show up for class. Schools across the country have seen an alarming spike in student absences since the pandemic.
--:-- John Bickley: And with the new school year many fear that the trend will continue. Daily Wire investigative reporter Moreda Lordy is here with the details.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Hammer it So we seen a spike in truancy over the last couple of years correct
--:-- Moreda Lordy: That right More than two years after COVID school lockdowns began many students have simply not been showing up for class.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Nearly 10 percent of K-12 students were missing from school on an average day this past school year, according to preliminary state data.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: About a quarter of students across the country were chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more of school days or about three and a half weeks.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Before COVID, only about 15% of students were chronically absent. So a jump from 15% to 25% of students now chronically absent post-COVID.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Overall, about 6.5 million more students became chronically absent across 40 states and Washington, D.C.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Black, Latino, and low-income students were more likely to be absent. That's according to absenteeism data from Thomas D., a Stanford economist.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Obviously, it's too early yet to know the trends for this fall, but officials are watching the numbers with some trepidation.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: So what are the trends nationally here? Is absenteeism worse in some areas than others?
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Yes, some states are definitely seeing more students ditching school. New Mexico, Alaska, and Arizona saw absenteeism rates rise by more than 20 percentage points between 2019 and 2022.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: California and Oregon both saw their absenteeism rates rise more than 15 percentage points between those years.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Washington, D.C., which also had particularly prolonged lockdowns, had elevated levels of absenteeism as well.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Meanwhile, states like Arkansas, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia saw absenteeism rise as well, but by below 10 percentage points.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: So what are the factors at work here? What's driving students skipping school?
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Well, Elmer Rolden, who runs a school dropout prevention group in Los Angeles, put it this way.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: For almost two years, we told families that school can look different and that schoolwork could be accomplished in times outside of the traditional 8-3 day, and families got used to that.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Another issue is parents keeping their anxious children home from school, a decision some psychologists say is understandably tempting for parents but can cause more anxiety down the road.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Meanwhile, students are still battling significant learning loss caused by months of remote schooling.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Right, we've reported on the dip in students' academic performance. Remind us what those numbers look like.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Sure. Well, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress numbers from June, average math and reading test scores for 13-year-olds plummeted to the lowest levels in decades.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Last month, a study showed that fourth through eighth grade students made even slower progress in reading and math last year than before the pandemic, dashing hopes that kids would learn faster to make up for learning loss during COVID.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Some families also opted to pull their children out of public school for good, opting instead for charter, private, and parish schools or homeschooling.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Public schools lost 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Meanwhile, homeschooling rose by 30% between the school year that began in 2019 and the one that began in 2021, a study from the Urban Institute showed.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: We're still waiting on updated data on whether these trends held in 2022.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: Well, it's pretty clear public schools are still struggling to regain the momentum they lost during the pandemic.
--:-- Moreda Lordy: We'll see if it turns around this fall.
--:-- John Bickley: Mariette, thanks for reporting.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks, John.
--:-- John Bickley: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.
