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In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

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21–28 of 28 posts

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#21
According to the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/6890189/Chinese... , China's statistics bureau recently revised their economic growth statistics for the past year. That would mean that China already overtook Japan as the world's second largest economy at some point in the last 6 months.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#22
post #10

I'm extremely worried about China's real estate bubble. Chinese labourers are working their asses off, while factory owners crop most of the profit. These money is pours into real estate market. Today an apartment is worth 30X anual income of an average worker(my estimation). Hope when I finish grad school in US and go back, I don't have to pay this much.

A devaluation of its currency should mitigate that (all that debts their citizens will have) afaik.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#23
post #10

I'm extremely worried about China's real estate bubble. Chinese labourers are working their asses off, while factory owners crop most of the profit. These money is pours into real estate market. Today an apartment is worth 30X anual income of an average worker(my estimation). Hope when I finish grad school in US and go back, I don't have to pay this much.

I sympathize. I run a wholesale / delivery bakery in Beijing. I've been looking for a storefront for over a year, but am convinced that most people who've signed rental contracts to do retail within the past year or so are currently losing money.

That is to say, I think the cost of commercial real estate (and likely residential) is currently too high. But that seems to indicate that it will eventually go down - if enough people start realizing they can't turn a profit with the property they're looking to rent, demand will sag, and prices should follow.

But maybe not in the near future - we've been seeing some serious inflation over the past couple of months.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#24
There's a pretty interesting analysis of China's current investment boom: http://www.pivotcapital.com/reports/Chinas_Investment_Boom_t...

It argues that China's investment boom is not going to continue and that private consumption cannot possibly fill the void. They think the bubble is going to burst in 2010/2011 and they have pretty convincing numbers. I'd love to hear why they are wrong.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#25

There's a pretty interesting analysis of China's current investment boom: http://www.pivotcapital.com/reports/Chinas_Investment_Boom_t... It argues that China's investment boom is not going to continue and that private consumption cannot possibly fill the void. They think the bubble is going to burst in 2010/2011 and they have pretty convincing numbers. I'd love to hear why they are wrong.

I don't have the data to respond to this entire paper, especially on big stuff like GDP ratios, etc, but an important part of their argument stuck out as shaky to me.

The paper argues that China's urbanization rate is already much higher than is commonly believed, due to China's definition of an urban centers. It notes that Houston or Brisbane would not be counted as cities, due to low population density. But, as a Chinese resident, I don't find it unreasonable at all that Houston wouldn't be counted as a city here - Houston, w/ a population of 2.2m and a density of 1375 people / square kilometer, is dwarfed when you compare it to a dense city of 11+ million like Tianjin, which is considered a bit of a hick town here in Beijing.

It seems unreasonable to use American standards for the definition of a city when China's population to usable land ratio is much higher than is frequently encountered in the West.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#27
post #25

There's a pretty interesting analysis of China's current investment boom: http://www.pivotcapital.com/reports/Chinas_Investment_Boom_t... It argues that China's investment boom is not going to continue and that private consumption cannot possibly fill the void. They think the bubble is going to burst in 2010/2011 and they have pretty convincing numbers. I'd love to hear why they are wrong.

I don't have the data to respond to this entire paper, especially on big stuff like GDP ratios, etc, but an important part of their argument stuck out as shaky to me. The paper argues that China's urbanization rate is already much higher than is commonly believed, due to China's definition of an urban centers. It notes that Houston or Brisbane would not be counted as cities, due to low population density. But, as a C…

I didn't find the population density comparison very convincing either. But the main point they are making is that not as many people as expected by the financial community are going to move to more urbanized centers in the years to come. Their argument would be more convincing if it was based on economic opportunity instead of population density though.

Re: In 2010 China will become the world’s second-largest economy

#28
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would apply to yc china if it existed. I would also be extremely interested in helping set up yc china if given the opportunity.

YC China may not, but Innovation Works ( http://en.innovation-works.com/ ) does. It's a slightly different model than YC (more of an incubator), but it's as close as you'll come. Its claim to fame is that it was founded by KaiFu Lee, founder of MSRA and Google China. He's pretty much the Bill Gates of China. On the first day of applications, they had something crazy like 30,000 resumes for 30 slots. So I'd say it's s…

That looks like it. Do you know if the Chinese Government has a stake in it? I tried doing research on the investors, but it's hard to know if the various arms of the CCP are actually limited partners in the VC firms with just a quick google.
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