China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth • Hacker News Board

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#81

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 11:27 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #64

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different dialects of Chinese you mean, and mandarin works well enough in most places as China also has a lot of transplants. You could love and work in Chengdu without without speaking sichuanese, for example. In India, the unifying language is English, though it isn’t as widespread in India as mandarin is in China.

> Different dialects of Chinese you mean No, the use of the term “dialect” is propaganda from the diversity-denying central government; describing Chinese languages as “dialects” is a gross abuse of the English word “dialect”, comparable to saying that French, Portuguese, and Romanian are all just dialects of Latin. “Chinese” consists of many mutually unintelligible languages (hundreds?), each of which has multiple d…

Sichuanese is much more of a dialect than Cantonese. Even my sorry laowai Chinese can make some of it out. Cantonese and fujianese are about as far away from mandarin as dialects get, and they still are somewhat intelligible with manadarin and each other. The real different languages of China are like Tibetan, Mongolian, zhuang, Miao, Uighur, and a plethora of minority languages, but Mandarin gets you far for work or life in China in most Chinese cities. It stops working that great once you get to heavy minority areas outside big cities.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#82

Post by Barrin92 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 11:39 AM UTC

RomanBob wrote: post #51

roenxi wrote: post #10

China has a population of more than a billion people, the 3rd largest landmass controlled by a single sovereign entity. The only question is how they managed to fall so low that they weren't a competitive superpower. It is entirely possible that we don't know what the reason for China's rise is over the short term. I wouldn't trust any article written in English to understand the ins and outs of China's special econo…

Communism. Any society with majority chinese population (singapore, taiwan, hong kong) that has a free market is a modern developed country. China stuck behind for 50 years, and is now catching up.

There are plenty of countries without any communist history that are in much worse shape than either China or Russia, so this can hardly be a sufficient explanation.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#83

Post by red_admiral » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:26 PM UTC

adinobro wrote: post #34

ztratar wrote: post #19

"Yet this process of economic liberalization and structural reform is also uniquely Chinese, insofar as it has emphasized local-level competition and experimentation, which in turn have supported bottom-up institutional innovation. The result is a kind of de facto fiscal federalism – and a powerful driver of economic transformation." I'm not entirely sure what this means. The article that is referenced by the author…

The article does not do a really good job at explaining what the government it doing but basically it is: 1. Creating competition between states/cities (Beijing vs Shanghai) which has similar advantages to the free market EVEN if both groups are part of the government. This tries to reduce waste and puts natural pressure on companies (including ones that are state owned). 2. Encouraging close proximity (like silicon…

> To just ignore anything that Chinese companies have done and say it is all stolen or copied is rather biased.

Upvote.

From talking to Chinese students overseas, it seems to me like Weibo and the like are actually ahead of FB/Twitter in many ways, including a functioning and scalable micropayment system. Sure, government support might be helpful, but you couldn't run anything of that kind and at that scale without some of the best tech people in the world.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#84

Post by whenchamenia » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:33 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #43

Solid article, I’ve underestimated the liberalization of the Chinese economy, especially in regards to technology and advanced manufacturing. Anyone know what the proverb means?

Its basically an akward (in english) rephrasing of the common "the last 10% is the hardest" concept. Also with the implied value proposition that a job 90% done is at best worth 50% of a finished one.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#85

Post by qd6pwu4 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

iliketosleep wrote: post #76

qd6pwu4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question is insightful. I think a major reason that China once fell so low is the Qing dynasty secluded itself from the outside world, and didn't catch up with the industrial revolution. So in 18xx-19xx, China was still an agricultural civilization and western countries have stepped into modern industrial form. And we know as to production efficiency, (non-modern) agriculture vs industry is like fist vs bombs. B…

1.4 billion educated people? China has made great progress in the area of education, but there is still a large percentage, especially from older generations and in rural areas, who never had any real educational opportunities (as you know, they were too busy fighting for survival). Also, given that the current leadership is taking a very different path that that of Deng, why are you so optimistic that China's rise w…

1.4 may not be accurate, but nearly every child is educated. 9-year compulsory education is the lowest standard across the country. The number fighting for survival is very small compared to the whole population (the recent number is 20 million). Now the government's poverty line is <400$ annual income, and the gov has the goal to eliminate this absolute poverty in 2020. The current path is different from the last 30 years, but Deng's reform has never changed. In some area, censorship is more strict (this has to do with complicated political reasons), but in more areas such as science, technology, trade, and finance, China is becoming more and more open to the world. Things may seem that Chinese are alienating themselves, but that is not true. More and more people go abroad every year. And although there is the wall, actually people know what happens outside China.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#86

Post by oblio » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #69

qd6pwu4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your question is insightful. I think a major reason that China once fell so low is the Qing dynasty secluded itself from the outside world, and didn't catch up with the industrial revolution. So in 18xx-19xx, China was still an agricultural civilization and western countries have stepped into modern industrial form. And we know as to production efficiency, (non-modern) agriculture vs industry is like fist vs bombs. B…

This, and western countries exploited that weakness and turned China in a protectorate with actual warfare, etc.

> industrialized countries

Japan isn't western.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#87

Post by dmix » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:55 PM UTC

qd6pwu4 wrote: post #85

iliketosleep wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.4 billion educated people? China has made great progress in the area of education, but there is still a large percentage, especially from older generations and in rural areas, who never had any real educational opportunities (as you know, they were too busy fighting for survival). Also, given that the current leadership is taking a very different path that that of Deng, why are you so optimistic that China's rise w…

1.4 may not be accurate, but nearly every child is educated. 9-year compulsory education is the lowest standard across the country. The number fighting for survival is very small compared to the whole population (the recent number is 20 million). Now the government's poverty line is <400$ annual income, and the gov has the goal to eliminate this absolute poverty in 2020. The current path is different from the last 30…

People tend to significantly overvalue the executive branches power combined with the worst cases you hear in the news when evaluating the freedom of the average person in a country. The economic freedom indexes can be quite surprising compared to popular perception.

But still I read something like 1 in 4 people are party members whether directly or indirectly. That’s a whole lot of people directly involved in the snitch line.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#88

Post by oblio » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #56

nine_k wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is exactly one country with a comparable populatuon, India. It's not doing exactly bad, too. The next largest country is USA, with roughly thee times smaller a population. Most countries with larger landmass have most of its landmass barely usable due to climate: Russia, Canada, Australia, Algeria. Most others from top 10 largest countries are doing OK: USA, India, Brazil. China has a unique combination of very…

Algeria? It is not as big as Argentina or Kazakhstan.

Algeria: 2.381 sqkm.

Argentina: 2.780 sqkm.

Kazakhstan: 2.724 sqkm.

It's pretty close.

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#89

Post by anonu » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

Western society rose to prominence because of a few values: respect for property rights, intellectual property and personal freedom. America is far from perfect but was based on these ideals.

It's maybe a simplistic view of the world and East vs West... But the recent HK protests can be rationalized through this lens.

I think respect for intellectual property and human rights will determine whether China continues it's march forward or not...

Re: China’s liberalization and structural reform drives growth

#90

Post by cltsang » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 1:24 PM UTC

newsgremlin wrote: post #79

cltsang wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are you challenging trickle down economics? That's debatable. I believe at least at the early stage capitalism trickle down economics works. However, without proper checks and balance system, corruption brought by power and wealth does stop the trickle down effect. Therefore in China where corruption is an accepted norm, it's doomed to fail. That was not originally planned though. Maybe that's also why recently th…

If the western economies were truly trickle down, the bucket at the top would be empty by now. However, the source of the trickle has become more sealed over time, and thus the inequality gap grows.

Seems you are one of the few who understands what I'm trying to say. Over time greed and corruption take over.

I live in Hong Kong, which is the most extreme example of this.

And I've also witnessed how this whole process is accelerated in China, since greed and corruption are more prevalent.