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The American Dream Is Alive in China

nytimes.com

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Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#31

Post by kkarakk »

joefranklinsrs wrote: post #26
Jyaif wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, China is investing in the long run (20 years+). A couple of points that leads me to think China will dominate the world in the next decades (if it has not started already): * With the Belt and Road initiative China is building deep relationships with half of the countries of the world. * Their industry is not slowed down by regulation, so they iterate and learn quickly. For example, some people think they'll be…

Belt and Road: Malaysian government stopped a $20B project. Maldives just called it one-sided. India refuses to have anything to do with it. So do most of the EU members. Media around the world is calling it debt trap Regulation: deadly vaccines. deadly milk powder. Their citizens then choose to buy foreign goods only hard work: they are at their job 60 hours a week. but only working 20.

why are people downvoting this-the only illogical point is the hours worked thing-sure a poorly trained chinese person may only be productive for 20 hours but they can afford to put 6 people on a task that people in the west would pay a single person for apart from software manhours do scale and even in software the majority of the world gets by on "good enough"

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#32

Post by kkarakk »

csense wrote: post #22

This isn't a surprise. Back in the day, a kid fresh out of high school in the US could get a job that supported a house with a yard, a car, children, and a non-working spouse. Factories were both directly paying good wages for non-high-skill positions and fueling a myriad of local businesses where those workers spent their money. Then globalization happened, and those factories went to China. Entire local and regiona…

>How do we do it?

space, humans have been stagnating since the 60s. the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#33

Post by T-A »

joefranklinsrs wrote: post #25
T-A wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exports are about 20% of China's GDP [1], and 18% of those exports go to the US [2]. So even you completely erased all of China's exports to the US, without substitution, you would only subtract 3.6% from its GDP, i.e. little more than half a year's worth of growth at the current rate of about 6.5% per year. Possibly a short recession, definitely not a crash. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?lo…

You forgot about the millions of jobs that disappear in China after factories leave for other countries. You forgot about the billions of foreign direct investment that actually helped China to get to where it is today, now leaving the country. You forgot about the real estate bubble in China deflating. The one that has the middle class of China paying for $1M house with their $1300/month income.

I responded to your closing statement that "$250B in tariff on Chinese imports in January 2019, followed up with potentially rest of the $600B in tariff on Chinese imports in 2019, will crash China". It's the only thing you wrote which at least contains some numbers, although you got them wrong (it's tariffs on $250 billions worth of imports, not "$250 billion in tariff", etc.).

More serious problems than US tariffs may well crash China's economy, but if you now want to argue so, you'd better bring (correct) numbers and analysis, not just handwaving about "millions of jobs that disappear" and so on (and keep in mind that a million in a country of more than one billion is not a whole lot of anything).

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#34

Post by scruffyherder »

joefranklinsrs wrote: post #25
T-A wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exports are about 20% of China's GDP [1], and 18% of those exports go to the US [2]. So even you completely erased all of China's exports to the US, without substitution, you would only subtract 3.6% from its GDP, i.e. little more than half a year's worth of growth at the current rate of about 6.5% per year. Possibly a short recession, definitely not a crash. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?lo…

You forgot about the millions of jobs that disappear in China after factories leave for other countries. You forgot about the billions of foreign direct investment that actually helped China to get to where it is today, now leaving the country. You forgot about the real estate bubble in China deflating. The one that has the middle class of China paying for $1M house with their $1300/month income.

Housing in China has nothing to do with the real estate market.

The real estate market is tied to GDP growth so there is such an excess of housing that there are ghost cities. It's also when you hear stupid stories about power plant shutdowns and going green.

I've been in China for over 5 years and can assure you that almost all news that is presented in the west is either misleading or just wildly out of context, to give a vastly different perception.

But there is far more DIY opportunity in China, but you have to do it yourself. Nobody is going to show you how or help.

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#35

Post by g9yuayon »

flukus wrote: post #27
g9yuayon wrote: post #14

One thing important that many people ignored about China is its K-12 education system. It is much better than the US in a number of ways, especially for the ordinary students, which accounts for the majority of the student body, myself included. - For starters, teachers in China are responsible. They care about the subjects they teach, and spend countless hours finding challenging problems for students as well as gra…

Correct me if I'm wrong and/or out of date, but isn't rote learning still the heart and sole of their education system? That's great if you want to churn out factory workers but it's not going to cut it if you want to lead in technology and innovation.

True for liberal arts. The K-12 education in the U.S puts a lot of emphasis on critical writing and research in liberal arts. I see much less rote learning there. And China's education on liberal arts, especially history and economics, resort to a lot of rote learning.

I feel sorry to say this, but there is really not much rote learning of STEM subjects in Chinese K-12. How can you rote learn when you need deep and intuitive understanding of fundamentals to excel in your math exams? That's what my teachers tried hard to instill in us every day. On the contrary, there's a lot of rote learning in that of the US. The reason is simple: students resort to rote learning because it works, and it works only because the problem sets they deal with are so simple and mechanical. That's not the case in China.

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#36

Post by pxtail »

kkarakk wrote: post #32
csense wrote: post #22

This isn't a surprise. Back in the day, a kid fresh out of high school in the US could get a job that supported a house with a yard, a car, children, and a non-working spouse. Factories were both directly paying good wages for non-high-skill positions and fueling a myriad of local businesses where those workers spent their money. Then globalization happened, and those factories went to China. Entire local and regiona…

>How do we do it? space, humans have been stagnating since the 60s. the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down

> the earth cannot support all of us anymore,it's breaking down

Of course this is overly dramatic and just wrong but you have a good point, in very very very long time frame this is viable option and provides big "goal" to achieve. Latest NASA promo video mentions Moon, Mars as next goals, I'm wondering if they are not setting narrative/preparing ground for more efforts targeted towards space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeA7edXsU40

Re: The American Dream Is Alive in China

#37

Post by aeriklawson »

canada_dry wrote: post #6

Give China another 20 years and they will surely have overtaken the USA in world leadership. Consider their new Silk Road initiative. 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China. Meanwhile the USA shits on its closest allies.

Not going to happen. Maybe after half a century or more (I'd bet close to one hundred) assuming everything goes perfectly, but not even close in twenty - at most they'll be a very strong regional power and their sphere of influence will push the US further out of SEA (which is still heavily favoring the US as of today).

China's economy will probably be the most powerful in the next twenty years, but that's not nearly enough. People vastly underestimate how interconnected and influential the US is economically and militarily - the idea that the US will not be the world's dominant superpower for the next fifty years is click bait in the era of Trump.

We're also quickly increasing the number of unknown variables as the years go by - no one knows how or when the next financial crisis will play out in China, or the volatility of their governmental system - countries often do well until one day they don't. The same could be said about the US, but the country has proven itself to be incredibly stable thus far.

> 3rd world/developing countries and America's numerous enemies alike are lining up to ally themselves with China

As you mentioned, 3rd world - they are playing the long game, certainly longer than twenty years. The payoffs they are hoping for are fifty to one hundred years away (in Africa, etc.)

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