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Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

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141–150 of 270 posts

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean technically people can’t own land in China, they’re just leasing it from the government. This assumption has been baked into real estate prices but people bid it up anyways.

> technically people can’t own land in China, they’re just leasing it from the government So it works like land in the UK, which is all owned by the King of England, but which is "leased" from him?

I think a core difference is that the law doesn’t stipulate that the land defaults back to the Crown after 100 years.

The difference is that in one system it’s symbolic and in the other system it has practical effects to manage ownership. I don’t think the Crown can decide, “I think we’ll just stop renewing the lease on this.”

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#142

Are the increasingly tight capital controls a precursor to a war with Taiwan or because the CCP expects some other shock to occur? Is their economy expected to crash for some other reason or is this simply dictatorships love centralised control over everything especially capital?

The CCP will not go to war in Taiwan anytime soon. Maybe ever. Younger Chinese are absolutely against it, the invasion of Ukraine has undermined everything China has ever said about invasion. To mount an invasion of Taiwan would be significantly more difficult than Ukraine, and is not feasible anytime soon. In short, China cannot afford it, monetarily and they cannot afford the potential blowback in trade and investm…

Aside from these reasons, another signal is KMT officials meeting with China on the mainland recently. It seems china would prefer to do things politically

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#143
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US depends on China to a level where I'd say they own us, not the other way around. They play a large part in making almost every product we use in the US, without trade with them we're screwed.

US/China trade is a surprisingly small. Canada, Mexico, China, the EU are all roughly equivalent plus a long tail of every other country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa... Where China has an oversized impact is our trade deficit and consumer goods which makes them seem vastly more important than they are. However, that’s also the most flexible with south east asia replacing Chinese manuf…

Long term China could be (already is being) replaced by countries like Vietnam and India as manufacturers. Possibly growing African countries like Nigeria as well. Chinese labor isn’t globally that cheap anymore but they do have the existing infrastructure

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That possibility makes me really nervous. A few weeks ago I was pretty sure that Beijing would not be that stupid, and simply stick with sending tons of dual-use goods, to keep up the plausible deniability. But Chinese rockets hitting Ukrainian kids in Kyiv/Europe? That would trigger dramatic sanctions. I don't think that is priced into the current world stock market.

It's not stupid. It's bold and almost risk-free. The US aren't the only people allowed to do proxy wars.

Risk free? They would start proxy World War III

Plus they would push western unity to an all time high. The US foreign policy would be perfectly aligned across party lines against China.

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCP will not go to war in Taiwan anytime soon. Maybe ever. Younger Chinese are absolutely against it, the invasion of Ukraine has undermined everything China has ever said about invasion. To mount an invasion of Taiwan would be significantly more difficult than Ukraine, and is not feasible anytime soon. In short, China cannot afford it, monetarily and they cannot afford the potential blowback in trade and investm…

Well, then it’s too bad that younger Chinese have no power at all in a dictatorship. The problem with your argument is that you’re assuming that whoever is leading China right now is rational. You would be right before Xi, but Xi is neither patient or rational. The end of the one China, two systems was totally unnecessary and reckless. I’m sure others can come up with more examples

A few months ago, there were widespread protests on the handling of covid in China. Since then, many covid restrictions have been eased and Hong Kong's mask policy was even recently lifted.

So protesting works, and Chinese people (young/old) do have power. (A fair amount of covid protests were held by university students btw)

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US depends on China to a level where I'd say they own us, not the other way around. They play a large part in making almost every product we use in the US, without trade with them we're screwed.

Decoupling has already started and is accelerating. It’s possible to be mostly done within 8 years

My pants were made in China, and now they are made in Mexico.

Mexico is optimally aligned, with a shared historical/cultural ethos, and desire for NA stability, too.

Also, it solves a problem; one cannot wage war without pants.

Well, unless you are General Buck Naked...

But my point is, manufacturing is returning to the West, which also has low cost production zones. And imagine, a revitalized Mexico, with the cartels broken, and a very strong middle class.

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ever centralisation around one man is incredibly short sighted. The Chinese system used to be much more sophisticated, having both a very capitalistic view of the world and a very communistic view. They have completely lost half of that and even the communism will disappear if things start going wrong - all that will be left is maintaining the dictatorship at all costs.

There is a fair chance of that happening. But: The cult of the individual leader has always been a strong component in China historically. So it wouldn't be a new thing, more a regression to the norm.

It's been a strong component the world over. Even in the US we've got exemplars such as George Washington, FDR, and the Adams and Bush dynasties. Democracies as political-individual-leader absent as Switzerland are the exception, not the rule. And the less so for other forms of government.

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean technically people can’t own land in China, they’re just leasing it from the government. This assumption has been baked into real estate prices but people bid it up anyways.

> technically people can’t own land in China, they’re just leasing it from the government So it works like land in the UK, which is all owned by the King of England, but which is "leased" from him?

That's... not how land in the UK works. Even the fraction of land which is owned by the Crown Estate and has tenants with fixed term contracts and obligations isn't administered by and doesn't send revenues to the King...

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#149
post #3

Meanwhile, China’s ruling party is intent on attracting inbound foreign capital. Somehow i think that may be a challenge. There may be money to be made in China, but if you never know if you can get it out thats going to put a damper on things.

I'm not so sure about that. China has brought a lot of US debt https://www.ey.com/en_cn/china-overseas-investment-network/o...

China has run a persistent trade surplus with the US [1] so naturally it's accumulated a lot of USD, about $3T [2]. And there's only one place to keep that much money safely which is US Treasury i.e., lend it back to the US.

[1] https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/china/foreign-exchange-reserves

Re: Chinese banks cause alarm as capital flight measures intensify

#150
post #130

Capital flight will decrease (in the medium term, like by the end of the decade) as US Dollar dominance diminishes. Oil trades between China-Russia-India are now denominated in Rupee-Rubles or Renminbi-Rubles starting only this past year, and so the groundwork is already laid.

Why would USD dominance diminish? Something like 90% of IP is based out of the US. Chinese education system is a complete joke (as evidence by brain drain).

Because having a global reserve currency strongly relies on network effects and USD share in international trade is failing steadily?

How much of this IP heap is an utter trash like software patents and patents on black rectangles generated just to be added to a patent pool? From my (surface-level) understanding school-level education in the US has much bigger troubles compared to China, but luckily for the US it gets compensated (for now) by sucking brains from all over the world into the well established system of universities.

And it's not like China has no experience with playing extremely loosely with IP laws.

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