141–150 of 156 posts
It’s bad. Many debt slaves were created in the recent mortgage and housing crisis, and a lot of workers are furious and apathetic working these long hours for little to no pay.
Anyone who took a high-speed train from Beijing to Shanghai over the past decade might have caught on to this phenomenon. The number of cities built in the middle of nowhere, with concrete skyscrapers standing empty, is stark and staggering. Seeing them is not only surreal, but gives one the sense of seeing something they ought not to, despite it being right outside the window. The only rationalization that withstand…
skyscrapers standing empty? zombie economy based on cheap debt? good thing the US doesn't have any of that.
China on the other hand, always squeeze and bit off wealth from it's private sector, sometimes not even by using the power of market force. China instead just issues laws and regulations until private business lights out.
For example, it is completely illegal for an individual entrepreneur to start up video sharing service (like YouTube), because hosting video sharing service require special license. And one of the condition is that the owner entity must be state-owned or state-majority. Without the license, the operator can be fined a huge sum of money and/or be jailed.
On the similar faction, there are also license requirements for operating service like news, BBS/forums/guestbook etc. Not all of them require a state-owned or state-majority owner, but still, enough to drive business ideas out of the window.
So that's a little background information I thought you should know.
Of course, not all laws and regulations issued by China was unreasonable and designed to drive out private business, and IMO state-owned company can operate many fields better than private ones (like running your water, gas, bus, hospital etc). But "letting good people do good things" is just not how things work in China.
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Are there no mechanization gains in China to increase ag production per worker? In the short term they're already net importers of food, no reason this can't continue until their population collapses via impacts of 1 child.
China is the world’s biggest importer of meat, dairy, soybeans and corn. The last time they tried an agricultural revolution, approximate 40m people starved to death. The Chinese population already in rapid decline, but not fast enough.
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Rent helps a lot when it comes to PPP. Also, services like healthcare, plumbing, education, etc
Buying a house is more expensive even if rents are cheaper (well, they are still in a big property bubble). Service in general are cheaper, but anything imported will be same or more expensive (obviously, since USD is being used to buy those). Cars were generally more expensive, and luxury cars still are, but low to mid end cars are about the same now. China has high taxes on luxury goods, and what is considered a lu…
Something being more expensive due to taxes doesn't affect PPP because that money is being used for government services.
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China is the world’s biggest importer of meat, dairy, soybeans and corn. The last time they tried an agricultural revolution, approximate 40m people starved to death. The Chinese population already in rapid decline, but not fast enough.
Their population doesn't seem to be in decline yet? The population growth may be in decline (I didn't check) but the population isn't. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China
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My understanding: business A sells USD 1,000 worth of goods abroad. Customer wires USD 1,000 to bank B to the account of business A as payment for the goods. This money does not go directly to the account of business A. Bank B sends USD 1,000 to Central bank and gets RMB 7,000 (or whatever the exchange rate is) which go to the account of business A. Bank B ends up with deposits almost entirely in RMB to loan out. Few…
> Few customers outside China really want those. Hence probably why China is pushing other countries to use Yuan as an exchange currency?
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China is not good at normal taxation. Local governments mostly get their money from property "sales" (long-term leases) and loans (mostly off-books these days). China has tried to enact property taxes but the push back was so big the government backed off. It is gonna be real rough soon.
China has an income tax and VAT, but the central government takes most of that, leaving most local governments incredibly underfunded. Property taxes could solve that, land transfer taxes can only be collected when property is built (and so they build).
Both are fairly low.
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I'd say their figures are weird. In some industries, output is truly astounding, making up 60-95% of worldwide total, and that is entirely verifiable and believable. In others, we see obvious lies. No one can really find out the truth, and some attempts to get to the truth only harm reputation of the one trying (like The Economist's own attempt to do it by measuring changes in night illumination, that was incredibly…
There was always that guy who was barred from trading in Hong Kong in 2016 because they claimed Evergrande was cooking its books [1]. Safe to say that snooping around China’s economy for real information isn’t going to be appreciated at all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Left
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Banks don't generally lend out deposits.
Their whole business is lending other people's deposits. For the most part they have no money of their own. They use your money lend and speculate with.