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Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

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31–40 of 73 posts

Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#32

Make business, not war. Not my advice but the advice of Jack Ma. You know, the guy the CCP effectively stripped of most of his influence for warning them about problems with China's banking and regulatory system.

Europe tried this with Russia (fossil gas) and still ended up in a bad spot. Trade is important and can be beneficial, but one should still prepare for war if peace is desired. The mental models of some nation state leaders deviates from what one would consider logical. They won’t hesitate to burn what has been built for their goals.

Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#35
By many measures, China looks and smells like it's already in the early stages of a major financial crisis and deep recession.[a] Publicly, the ruling party adamantly insists otherwise -- but that's always to be expected from politicians. We ought to consider only the data, not what they say. The data looks and smells really bad.

My biggest hope is that the economic pain will induce soul-searching and push China away from authoritarianism, leading to the country's gradual transition into a modern democracy -- to the detriment of party apparatchiks and their psychophants, whose power and importance depends on maintaining the status quo.

My biggest fear is that party apparatchiks start pushing for policies that can lead only to armed conflict in the hopes of holding on to their power and status -- e.g., they might push for annexing Taiwan by force in the short run, ensuring a confrontation with the West. Few things impede political change as well as armed conflict.

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[a] See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101496 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37101229 for background.

Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The overproduction of housing and other real estate in China has been a clear bubble that must eventually burst for at least 15 years. I’ve been stunned consistently they’ve managed to stave off the inevitable for this long. There are entire sections of cities that are entirely devoid of residents, entire sky scrapers empty - entire blocks upon blocks of empty sky scrapers. It could be waved away as long as growth wa…

Could say the same about nyc.

NYC vacancy rates are single digit, while Shanghai is around 15% and Nanning is around 25%. It’s incomparable. Imagine if 25% of the apartments in NYC were completely vacant.

https://landgeist.com/2021/11/04/housing-vacancy-rate-in-chi...

Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#37

For some fascinating background on China's present economic troubles check out this 11 August 2023 opinion piece in The Guardian by George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/11/china-econo...

Kyle Bass had a great tweet recently on this too: China's REPORTED GDP 'growth' for 2022 was +2.9%. In a year where Chinese LNG demand was down 22%, their real estate market (which represents 33% of Chinese GDP) was in the midst of a collapse, literally welding Chinese citizens into their apartment buildings, and the WeChat payments flowing through their system were down over 20% yoy. In 2023, YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT is s…

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Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#38

Make business, not war. Not my advice but the advice of Jack Ma. You know, the guy the CCP effectively stripped of most of his influence for warning them about problems with China's banking and regulatory system.

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> They have no choice. War is coming to them whether they like it or not.

Wait… what? Which country is going to attack China?

Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could say the same about nyc.

NYC vacancy rates are single digit, while Shanghai is around 15% and Nanning is around 25%. It’s incomparable. Imagine if 25% of the apartments in NYC were completely vacant. https://landgeist.com/2021/11/04/housing-vacancy-rate-in-chi...

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Re: Chinese Trust Companies on the Brink

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> They have no choice. War is coming to them whether they like it or not. Wait… what? Which country is going to attack China?

The country that has been building military bases all around china? The country that has a history of attacking china for 200 years? The country that contemplated nuking china? Is that a serious question? If china's official stance was that the US was it's top enemy and their goal was to 'contain the US' and proceeded to build military bases all over canada, mexico, cuba, etc, we'd take that as a declaration of war.
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