Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then they'll get 2 additional armies every single turn! And a territory card!
What is the reference here ? Is it the same reference as neighbour comment about Tasmania and daemon armies ?
The board game Risk.
The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
41–50 of 159 posts
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#42So who's buying all that debt?
What makes you think that the debt has to be bought?
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#43In economic terms, how is this sustainable?
It absolutely isn't. The funny part is, for the past 12+ years voices predicting an economic collapse of China have gotten stronger and stronger, but it just doesn't happen. Every time they passed some magic number in some statistic it was all "zomg collapse is imminent!" I guess with a government like they have you have greater possibilities to cover up and postpone the effects, but who knows how this will manifest.…
Eh it's absolutely sustainable. China is a monetary sovereign. All of this debt is issued in a currency that they can literally create out of thin air. There is zero possiblity that China will default on this debt. And China has been very careful to avoid externally denominated debt.
The only real risk here currency revulsion. At some point there is a risk that nobody will want the currency. But the risk of internal revulsion is low. Chinese citizens have to pay taxes and many other kinds of fees and fines in the currency. They have no choice. External revulsion is a threat but here again the Chinese have opted to buy out their external dependencies. This is why China wants to own all that farmland in Brazil. It never wants to find itself in a situation where it must buy dollars in order to buy soybeans and other critical food stuffs.
People will go on and on about China's sovereign debt. They just don't get it. This is basic MMT (modern monetary theory). The bigger risk for China is that they grow too slowly not that they grow too fast.
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it seems to be the other way around. China's GDP figures are definitely false but likely to be inflated, not suppressed.
Can you explain why that is for the ignorant ones like me?
Because the statistics are produced by local apparatchiks, and the local apparatchiks all want their jurisdiction to look like it's breaking records so they can get promoted and become something bigger than a local apparatchik. And the central government wants to look successful too, so nobody there has any interest in pushing back. High numbers mean everybody in the system wins, while low numbers profit nobody, so the numbers come out high.
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> China's GDP is probably 10% of what they reported. > other way around ... likely to be inflated, not suppressed. If their GDP is actually 10% of what they report, then the reports are inflated.
Edit: Never mind, I can't read. :) The comment you are replying to is suggesting that the actual figures are inflated, not the ones they report, meaning actual GDP is higher than reported GDP.
That doesn't make any sense, and would be a really strange way to think about actual vs reported GDP.
The actual (real, factual) number just is what it is. The only number that can be inflated/suppressed/fudged/faked is the reported number.
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#46So who's buying all that debt?
What makes you think that the debt has to be bought?
Government debt, much like large corporate debt, almost always takes the form of bond issues. By definition, to raise debt capital via a bond issue someone needs to buy those bonds. Buying bonds is buying debt. Thus, governments cannot raise money through debt issues if people are unwilling to buy the debt.
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Investment doesn't buy you all the 'Living Space' you may want
I've taken the train across china from Hangzhou to Beijing and there is no lack of living space, or empty housing from the speculative bubble. The threat of south-irian is basically the classic yellow-peril threat model. Its a really bad argument. As long as we are happy to export tertiary education and then proffer immigration channels, there is no basis to argue the Chinese polity wants to invade: it can get people…
> I've taken the train across china from Hangzhou to Beijing and there is no lack of living space, or empty housing from the speculative bubble.
The point of the parent's reference isn't to a lack of actual space, it's to Germany's complaint in the 1930s of not having enough Lebensraum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum
... which was similarly spurious -- the Germans had plenty of room for their population too. Lebensraum wasn't about actual space, it was about imperalism, about the Germans feeling strong enough to grab territory from their neighbors just because they could. One could be forgiven for looking at China's military expansionism in the South China Sea, for instance, and thinking the Chinese polity is feeling the same way.
Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#48Re: The Chinese Government Likely Borrowed More than the US in 2017
#49External debt is just 14% http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
This is what all the China fear mongers don't get. China has in reality zero external debt when you consider their real, income-producing over seas investment. China's extraordinary growth is not being financed by overseas investors. (Just the opposite, China itself is aggressively investing over seas.) All of this is being financed by the Chinese people themselves. No other country in the world had been able to so successfully boot strap their own economy with so little help.