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China’s Economy Slows Sharply

nytimes.com

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Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#231

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

gamblor956 wrote: post #42
contingencies wrote: post #32

These articles are coming thick and fast from three sources: The Washington Post, New York Times and Bloomberg. Nobody else (BBC, Australia, etc.) seems to be reporting the same, which leads me to believe there's a political element to this reporting, particularly amidst the current "trade war". (We don't see a rash of "US Economy Shows Sharply" every time something goes wrong for the US, although the trend is arguab…

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45910262 1 second on Google to confirm you're wrong about the reporting being political. Also, you must be unfamiliar with American media. They've been posting negative articles about the economy for months, with different publications focusing on different parts of the US economy.

Agreed. These articles about China slowing are if anything begrudgingly positive for Trump. If GP thinks NYT, WaPo, and Bloomberg are lining up to make pro-Trump propaganda... well, clearly not familiar with US Media.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#232

Post by jhanschoo »

yesforwhat wrote: post #145
shanghaiaway wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be interested in reality rather than projections. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, etc. are corporate entities separate from the Chinese government.

> Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, etc. are corporate entities separate from the Chinese government. Not quite.

Since the default expectation is that public companies operate quite independently from the govt., it would be nice to reference some sources alleging with evidence close relationships between these companies and the Chinese govt.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#233

Post by repolfx »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #216
repolfx wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could paint such a dramatic story for many parts of the world. At the start of the 20th century the UK controlled so much of the world they said the sun never sets on the British Empire. It led the industrialisation of the planet, lost millions of men to the trenches of the first world war, then was nearly wiped out and turned into a slave state by Hitler before successfully liberating Europe with its allies.…

"That all sounds like a much more traumatic modern history than China's." That is so far off the mark. China was turned into a tributary state by the Western powers. It was repeatedly - successfully - invaded by Japan. Tens of millions died in the fires of civil war and revolution. It industrialised within a span of 50 years. It was hit successively by waves of nationalism, communism, and capitalism in a single centu…

I guess my point wasn't specific to the UK, but rather that quite a few countries have had dramatic and society-redefining events happen to them without experiencing a large number of revolutions as a consequence. So we can't say that China's revolutionary past is an obvious consequence of anything in particular that happened to it.

With respect to which country has had more drama in the 20th century, I'm not sure there's a scale that can be applied to compare them - to me it seems both countries have been through a lot. And that's what I'm getting at. Clearly, experiencing war, invasion or very real threat of invasion (Hitler was trying his best to destroy the navy!) and rapid industrialisation is not by itself sufficient to lead to revolution. There may be something else at work beyond mere events, perhaps a cultural aspect.

The British political parties of the 50s and 60s were hardly Keynesian except in the sense that they liked spending money, and no the crisis of the 1970s wasn't "general to the west". The USA was busy putting a man on the moon in this era, the German economy was outstripping the UK's quite significantly. The UK had to go to the IMF for a bailout its economy was so sick. The cause was pretty clearly and directly militant socialism - once Thatcher got the unions under control and liberalised the economy, the UK caught up with its erstwhile foe and was no longer the 'sick man of Europe'. There was a lot for Thatcher to do because at the time she came to power the British government owned huge quantities of ailing industries, including things like hotel chains and removal companies. Not so dissimilar to China's model where so much industry is state owned.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#234

Post by PakG1 »

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #206
PakG1 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has had 4 or 5 revolutions (depending on whether you want to count the Cultural Revolution; it was perhaps an anti-revolution where while revolutions normally attempt to overthrow the government, the cultural revolution attempted to maintain the government's power) in the last century. There are few countries in the world that can say they've gone through five revolutions within the last century. https://en.wik…

I don't think this is the best way of looking at things. China is virtually a continent unto itself. It's a huge and fractous territory. It is little surprise that when the empire fell at the beginning of the 20th century after 4000 years, in the most tumultuous period of world history, that it went through a long phase of war and revolution. It was divided among the West's great powers, repeatedly invaded by a risin…

I don't believe it's impossible for you to be correct and for the Chinese government to still be seriously concerned about revolution risk. Whatever the reasons are, it is what it is. FWIW, I do agree with all your points too. A tour through their national history museum in Xian shows how proud they are that Mao was able to finally set China on its own feet on the global stage such that it no longer would be forced to be a vassal state in the future. It opened my mind about why and how the Chinese government creates and implements its foreign policy. It never again wants to be a vassal state, and everything is seen through that lens.

But just as they are worried about the threats from without, they are also worried about the threats from within. This is what I see in their domestic policies.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#235

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kristofferR wrote: post #228
api wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American equivalent is useless military hardware, including sometimes hardware the Pentagon says it doesn't even need. Both approaches are wasteful but which is more so is debatable. Our military Keynesianism throws off R&D dividends that apply to civilian use cases, but people could live in those cities.

A lot of the empty cities/buildings/apartments are way overpriced due to speculation, so the people who want to live in them can't because they're way too expensive and the people who afford to live in them don't want to. That won't change unless housing prices crash, which would be devastating to a lot of ordinary Chinese who have their savings invested in the housing market. More people are buying their second and…

A lot of those empty cities (well, districts actually) don't have jobs anyways, so no one actually wants to live in them. In fact, the only reliable way the Chinese government has in getting people to live in them is to move government offices to the area (so civil servants have to live there at least), and then there are problems as the speculators have already come in. This is kind of what the government is trying to avoid in Xiong'an by disallowing speculators (good luck with that).

At this point, there is no way for the housing market to crash gracefully. Maybe in 2011, but not in 2018. The amount of leverage offered up by Chinese banks this time means that most speculators can't simply wait out a downturn.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#236

Post by vkou »

henrikschroder wrote: post #125
mc32 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, had the Romans not invaded and expanded, much of the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe would have remained 'barbarian' for quite a while. They arguably brought civilization with them into the far-reaches of Europe (obviously at a great toll to the local populations)..

Arguably, the British brought a lot of things with them to India as well, infrastructure, medicine, industry, language. All these things benefit Indians living today, and many millions of Indians living today wouldn't be alive if the course of history hadn't been changed. How do you put a value on that? Also, many Indians were killed resisting the colonial invasion, and their descendants are not living today as a res…

Well, African Americans were enslaved, but were also taught valuable skills in cotton agriculture. Having carefully weighed the pros and cons of the two, we've concluded that slavery in the United States was a net wash, and, if we were to repeat the experiment again, slaveowners should not owe their slaves any reparations.

> infrastructure

Infrastructure that was paid for, and built by the people of India.

> medicine

Then why did life expectancy in British India go down during the colonial period? And why were millions of people dying in famines, all the while British India was a net exporter of food, to the rest of the empire?

> industry

How did countries that did not get colonised ever manage to industrialize?

> language

What, did Indians communicate with eachother through chest-thumping, and grunts, before someone had the bright idea of teaching them how to speak English? Christ on crutches... This reads a bit like satire.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#237

Post by sho »

jhanschoo wrote: post #230
sho wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China has a long history of civil unrest > The return to authoritarianism can be seen as battening down the hatches Obligatory not a "China expert" but I think you're very much correct. A lot of people don't seem to understand how different, and explosive, the political situation is in China. There is very little social trust, certainly little trust in government, and things could fly apart quickly and violently. T…

Regarding Xi's motivations with respect to his "strongman" actions, this document about Xi before he became the Gen Sec might shed some light: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09BEIJING3128_a.html

Thank you for that, hadn't seen it. Very interesting, if somewhat dated, but perhaps cause for cautious optimism.

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#239

Post by thedailymail »

jhanschoo wrote: post #232
yesforwhat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, etc. are corporate entities separate from the Chinese government. Not quite.

Since the default expectation is that public companies operate quite independently from the govt., it would be nice to reference some sources alleging with evidence close relationships between these companies and the Chinese govt.

Huawei: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Huawei-affair-growing-Commun...

Alibaba: https://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-jack-ma-outed-as-a-m...

Tencent: https://www.axios.com/china-big-tech-alibaba-tencent-communi...

Baidu: https://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/chinese-tech-giants-like...

Re: China’s Economy Slows Sharply

#240

Post by [deleted] »

landryraccoon wrote: post #24
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look -- I'm as skeptical of the Chinese miracle as anyone. But serious question: if the data was really as fake as everyone says, wouldn't the official and unofficial exchange rate of the Yuan be a lot larger? If the Chinese are basically pretending the economy has grown 500% and it's only grown 100%, wouldn't the value of the Yuan prove it?

You can fake stats sure, but can you fake the fact that everything sold in an Apple store and half the stuff on Amazon or Walmart is made in China now?

[deleted]
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