21–30 of 74 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is, of course, completely different from the performance figures of departments in large corporations, because... um.
And this is why we have (nominally independent) external auditors for corporations. Cooking the books is maladaptive in the long run, and needs to be discouraged at every level.
There's an economist from Tsinghua University named Patrick Chovanec who used to do an amazing job of documenting China's explosive growth and the many ways in which it might have been artificially inflated (easy credit, shadow banking, fudged numbers, empty skyscrapers, etc.). His blog is still up, but unfortunately he switched from blogging to Tweeting in 2013 and it's been impossible to follow his train of thought…
My guess is that China is inflating its numbers, but even so, the growth they've had is impressive and a lot of it is real. And even with further inflation of their numbers, I don't think they will be a paper tiger with nukes, like the USSR was.
Much longer thoughts on America vs. China http://www.jonathanbrun.com/who-will-lead-the-world/
Another somewhat popular or not so popular opinion is that China reports gdp numbers lower than what they actually have. I don't know what to believe but putting it out there for discussion.
Do you have a source for this?
Having travelled to China a few times over the past two decades, I have witnessed the economic growth with my own eyes and it is quite real. That of course does not mean that any number coming out of China is real and that there are not big inbalances whoes correction is overdue.
By some measures China has already passed the United States: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-18/who-has-t... China, and eventually India, matching the United States will hopefully help increase R&D. For example: - Solar energy prices have dropped significantly because of China's investment. - Nuclear energy is dead in the US but lives in China. - AI - China will match the US, accelerating development…
Only in PPP, which doesn't mean much because many things are more expensive in China than the USA (housing, cars, high-end goods, schooling, ...). For an equivalent lifestyle, you often need to earn more in China than the USA, so PPP seems to be a weird metric. - Solar is suspected to be heavily subsidized by the government. That isn't so bad for us as long as we don't produce panels, it has led to a solar revolution…
- it's worth noting that along with data and talent, there is money - China's dedicated 150 billion USD to AI as part of it's 5 year plan. Meanwhile the US is considering cutting scientific research funding by as much as 15% as part of 2018 budget
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Only in PPP, which doesn't mean much because many things are more expensive in China than the USA (housing, cars, high-end goods, schooling, ...). For an equivalent lifestyle, you often need to earn more in China than the USA, so PPP seems to be a weird metric. - Solar is suspected to be heavily subsidized by the government. That isn't so bad for us as long as we don't produce panels, it has led to a solar revolution…
"Citizens are extremely wary of the government to do it right." - I don't think citizens have much say in the matter... - it's worth noting that along with data and talent, there is money - China's dedicated 150 billion USD to AI as part of it's 5 year plan. Meanwhile the US is considering cutting scientific research funding by as much as 15% as part of 2018 budget
They actually have more say than you think. And also, the government also has a lot of its own introspection about nuclear, especially after Fukushima. Couple with the huge capital costs, and it isn't a sure thing for China.
> it's worth noting that along with data and talent, there is money - China's dedicated 150 billion USD to AI as part of it's 5 year plan.
Much of the current advances in AI are not coming from federal funding (rather, private companies who are using it). Nor can you expect Chinese academia to soak up that much money and use it efficiently. Again, China has a chance at it, but it is far from inevitable. It is annoying to me when they talk about how their success is a sure thing, the Chinese government used to talk about how they would clean up their pollution problem by 2015 in 2010 because they were going to spend a lot of money on it....
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... except top-level officials are constantly shuffled between posts in different cities/provinces they have no family ties to specifically to prevent such corruption.
That only actually prevents it if: (1) rotations are most often exactly one of the periods on which goals and evaluations occur (that is, understating growth that at least meets the goal never is expected to help you by making it more likely you can plausibly claim to meet a growth goal the next period), and (2) the rotating top-level officials have some other structursl disincentive to form a class identity and clas…
Oh you mean like "play by the rules, have a nice life for you and your family" versus "capital punishment for you, and movement restriction and asset seizure for your family"?
Having lived, worked and now running a B2B SaaS company there, the growth is real. Are the numbers exactly right, of course not. China is a massive, complex and not entirely transparent mesh of interests. Long story short though, there is a real middle class in China that is driving real consumer demand. This is starkly different to India, South Africa or Brazil where no real middle class exists. Much longer thoughts…
Having lived, worked and now running a B2B SaaS company there, the growth is real. Are the numbers exactly right, of course not. China is a massive, complex and not entirely transparent mesh of interests. Long story short though, there is a real middle class in China that is driving real consumer demand. This is starkly different to India, South Africa or Brazil where no real middle class exists. Much longer thoughts…
Also, lots of Chinese local governments have confessed to faking data.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id...
http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/economy/china-province-...
In addition, if you check out Anne Stevenson yang, a China expert living in China, she said the real gdp growth is only 1-2%
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That only actually prevents it if: (1) rotations are most often exactly one of the periods on which goals and evaluations occur (that is, understating growth that at least meets the goal never is expected to help you by making it more likely you can plausibly claim to meet a growth goal the next period), and (2) the rotating top-level officials have some other structursl disincentive to form a class identity and clas…
some other structural disincentive Oh you mean like "play by the rules, have a nice life for you and your family" versus "capital punishment for you, and movement restriction and asset seizure for your family"?
If it's perceived to be applied in a spotty manner, according to shifting whims of the leadership as to issues of concern, and with favoritism that can see the guilty free and the innocent punished, then, no, that just incentivizes currying favor and trying to influence the leadership perception that drive where enforcement is and isn't focussed.