|
Fojar38 posted:You can't take things at face value like this for China. More specifically, you can't take things like that at face value in China partly because you also wouldn't take them at face value in America. The ACA featured an expansion of the American social safety net, but many, many words have been written on SA criticizing the bill's practical effect and efficiency.
|
#
?
Jun 15, 2016 00:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 15:17 |
|
|
Toplowtech posted:Yeah it's a slow-mo shipwreck. Would you rather have a high-speed one?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 05:49
|
|
|
VideoTapir posted:Would you rather have a high-speed one?
|
|
#
?
Jun 16, 2016 06:25
|
|
|
China GDP figure comes in at 6.7%, beating expectations of 6.6% How convenient.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 04:28
|
|
|
Hi where is the 6.7% growth supposed to be coming from? Like the number is obviously fake but where are we supposed to believe it is coming from? Chinese industry is in a straight-up recession, are we supposed to believe that a country with a per-capita GDP of like $7600 generated like $300 billion in growth over the past 3 months by buying phones and cars? Glorious China went from 19th century smokestack economy to 21st century consumer economy in the span of 6 months?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 04:47
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:Hi where is the 6.7% growth supposed to be coming from?  Take that with as many grains of salt as you please. quote:As China reports gross domestic product this week, the structure of the world’s second-largest economy has evolved, with services, categorized as tertiary industries, now contributing a majority of GDP. In the January-March quarter, which includes the annual new year festival when most factories close and hundreds of millions of people travel, services accounted for a record high 57 percent of economic output, compared with 38 percent from manufacturing-led secondary industries and the rest from agriculture. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/chinese-gdp-driven-by-at-your-service-not-manufacturing-chart I would blow Dane Cook fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jul 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 04:54
|
|
|
Ahahahaha so like, are we supposed to believe that people are filing out of factories and into shopping malls and banks or something? That there just happened to be a massive uptick in "services" that coincided with the decline of Chinese manufacturing and made up for it growth-wise? Or is this "services now contributing a majority of GDP!" actually because China's industry has crashed so hard that services looks way better by comparison even though it hasn't really changed much? If so, where the hell is 6.7% coming from?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:03
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:Ahahahaha so like, are we supposed to believe that people are filing out of factories and into shopping malls and banks or something? That there just happened to be a massive uptick in "services" that coincided with the decline of Chinese manufacturing and made up for it growth-wise? Must be that new camwhoring app that came out.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:09
|
|
|
I'm trying to wrap my head around this legitimately so if I am just really clueless someone who knows what they are talking about please tell me. I see a ton of smart people with expensive degrees going "Yep, China sure is doing great based on this government data!" so the problem must be me, right?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:12
|
|
|
Anecdotal and all, but people are buying a ton of poo poo in China, more so than ever before. So who knows how real or fake this data is.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:42
|
|
|
Maybe it's panic buying like when Russians scramble to buy buckwheat when their economy looks to be imploding (this time due to the oil surplus.)  http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russia-s-traditional-economic-barometer-swings-toward-crisis/511479.html quote:Following the news of a bad buckwheat harvest, panic buying of the traditional foodstuff sent prices soaring in a sign that some analysts say is likely linked to economic anxieties, not harvest yields.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:57
|
|
|
GlassEye-Boy posted:Anecdotal and all, but people are buying a ton of poo poo in China, more so than ever before. So who knows how real or fake this data is. Enough to grow an economy the size of China's by 6.7%?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 05:58
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:I'm trying to wrap my head around this legitimately so if I am just really clueless someone who knows what they are talking about please tell me. I see a ton of smart people with expensive degrees going "Yep, China sure is doing great based on this government data!" so the problem must be me, right? China's government increased stimulus spending and loosened its money supply to boost consumption and investment. We might question whether the government investments are in truly useful economic activity and not more concerned with boosting metrics, but there are still lots of "catch-up with proven concepts" investments that the CCP has shown an ability to handle reasonably well so far so there's no reason to think that growth rate is impossible.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 06:29
|
|
|
China's going to run into a lack of aggregate demand very quickly, I wonder if this latest round of cheap credit and infrastructure spending won't be their version of the late 80s in Japan where they opened the money spigot to max because their economy was starting to cool off, and basically caused the 91 crash in doing so
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 06:46
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:China's government increased stimulus spending and loosened its money supply to boost consumption and investment. We might question whether the government investments are in truly useful economic activity and not more concerned with boosting metrics, but there are still lots of "catch-up with proven concepts" investments that the CCP has shown an ability to handle reasonably well so far so there's no reason to think that growth rate is impossible. What sorts of "catch up with proven concepts" are we talking about? More construction?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 07:00
|
|
|
JeffersonClay posted:We might question whether the government investments are in truly useful economic activity and not more concerned with boosting metrics no reason it can't be both, since the two can and frequently do go hand in hand. arguing otherwise is kind of like the guy on the first page of the thread who suggested china wants to keep people employed merely to maintain power rather than, y'know, keep people employed
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 07:01
|
|
|
Homework Explainer posted:no reason it can't be both, since the two can and frequently do go hand in hand. arguing otherwise is kind of like the guy on the first page of the thread who suggested china wants to keep people employed merely to maintain power rather than, y'know, keep people employed Ah yes, the gracious and selfless CCP.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 07:15
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:What sorts of "catch up with proven concepts" are we talking about? More construction? Pretty much, more construction of factories, buying new and better machine tools, etc. Too bad there's not nearly enough demand for the poo poo made with them inside or outside china to prevent permanent economic depression
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 08:10
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:Ahahahaha so like, are we supposed to believe that people are filing out of factories and into shopping malls and banks or something? That there just happened to be a massive uptick in "services" that coincided with the decline of Chinese manufacturing and made up for it growth-wise? 
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 08:42
|
|
|
So I get that the Chinese economy is basically divided into about 3 areas; the wealthy coastal white-collar workers (think Shanghai and Shenzhen), the blue collar industrial migrant workers largely in the northeast, and the poor interior many of whom are still living largely agrarian lifestyles. For the past decade the Chinese economy was growing really fast because migrant workers were flowing into cities and getting factory jobs; China's demographics at the time favored this and "Made in China" became a thing. Lots of Chinese eventually got something resembling a middle income (and others became really really loving rich thanks to connections) and were able to do things like buy cars, apartments, and send their kids to school. As a result you even have something resembling tech startups or whatnot on the coast, often founded on a flood of easy credit from the government controlled banks, although they are still largely ripoffs of western services that are shielded from foreign competition by the government. Buuuut as more and more workers flooded into cities and got factory jobs overcapacity became a problem and the Chinese Government, fearing unemployment and consequent social unrest, props them up using various accounting tricks which is where we get the zombie factories of today churning out tons of products that there's no demand for. This industrial sector of China's economy is in terminal decline and it is so bad that not even the CCP is pretending that it isn't, and are instead shifting the narrative to one about a "transition to consumption to drive economic growth." But with most workers still having relatively low wages (although higher than they used to be) how are they going to consume? It's true that China's capacity for consumption is way higher than it used to be, but it's still nowhere even close to that of developed economies. The wealthier coastal provinces have money to spare, but not enough to buoy the entire Chinese economy, and the poor interior no longer has any easy source of acquiring wealth now that the demographics have shifted and China's workforce is in decline. Is the idea that these millions of middle-income (ie around $5000 a year) factory workers will take the money from their jobs at the zombie factories and spend it on things, thereby adding sufficient consumption to what is accomplished by the coast to make up for the decline of China's industry? If these factories aren't profitable (and everything I have seen seems to indicate that most are not) then where are their wages coming from? Government loans to the companies that own the factories? Where is THAT money coming from? Bank loans? But the banks are lending to factories that will never make the loan back. I'm lost. I don't see where a hypothetical consumption miracle could come from, unless most of China's blue-collar workers began to work in services. Is that happening? Services are a much more competitive job market than manual labor and require a completely different skillset, not to mention higher education. Seems like it's a little late for the factory workers to be switching gears like that. So uhhhhhhhhh I must be missing something here. Someone please tell me where I am being a dumbass.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 09:07
|
|
|
Just stop taking the GDP figures as gospel truth, nobody else does.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 09:12
|
|
|
Jumpingmanjim posted:Just stop taking the GDP figures as gospel truth, nobody else does. Yeah, I definitely don't, but I am trying to wrap my head around the underlying narrative here and how it is supposed to work. Even people who are bearish on China say things like "Unless the Chinese economy can transition to services and consumption" and I am having trouble envisioning the path to that. Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Jul 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 09:14
|
|
|
Fojar38 posted:Is the idea that these millions of middle-income (ie around $5000 a year) factory workers will take the money from their jobs at the zombie factories and spend it on things, thereby adding sufficient consumption to what is accomplished by the coast to make up for the decline of China's industry? If these factories aren't profitable (and everything I have seen seems to indicate that most are not) then where are their wages coming from? Government loans to the companies that own the factories? Where is THAT money coming from? Bank loans? But the banks are lending to factories that will never make the loan back. It's paid for through current and future savings from other, non-manufacturing sectors of the economy. Chinese people don't spend their money on goods they put it in a bank which lends it to unprofitable manufacturing companies. China's savings rate is incredibly high, around 50%. Japan in the 70s never went above 35%. Note that that savings directly detracts from consumption. This is sustainable unless you spend so much money on unprofitable factories that even leeching off consumption can't pay it all back (Japan in the late 80s, China today?). The real problem with this is that it causes deflation, because you're producing way more stuff than people can possibly buy, because you're taking money from consumers and giving it to producers. Deflation acts as a retardant on the whole economy because nobody will invest money if the nominal value of that investment tends to fall over time, and nobody will spend money because if you wait a year everything will be cheaper. Japan, despite herculean efforts at printing money, has only managed to hold deflation at 0% since the early 90s. Looking at indicators it seems China is struggling to maintain 2% right now, and that will probably fall more over time. So that's one potential problem, the other problem is productivity growth which is slowed by government intervention and support for unprofitable enterprises, along with rigid and inefficient labor markets. Japan has both, especially the second, so it's labor productivity is hilariously low (~$40/person/hour worked compared to ~$60 in the US and Western Europe). China thus far has been doing the first worse than Japan ever did, and although I'm not really up on China's labor market I suspect they either will or already have moved in the direction of Japan with extremely strong job security (despite poo poo wages) to mollify the public. The answer to why China will somehow avoid all these problems is the standard "Inscrutable Oriental Empire ruled the world for 4800 years until evil white people ruined it, and will return to its rightful place in the future". If you read the op-ed pages people will literally spend a paragraph bitching about how Japan was unable to / refused to reform, and then in the next paragraph confidently state that of course the CCP will fix China, it's practically guaranteed icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Jul 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 10:19
|
|
|
icantfindaname posted:4800 years What the gently caress is this?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 11:36
|
|
|
Jumpingmanjim posted:What the gently caress is this? 5000 years of civilization, apparently only 200 of them being assfucked by western imperialists?
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 13:57
|
|
|
AtomikKrab posted:5000 years of civilization, apparently only 200 of them being assfucked by western imperialists? This always annoyed me. If all the different "Dynasties" (which in my opinion is an inaccurate term, I would call them "states" or "empires") which could have radically different religions, territories, ideologies, governments, cultures, or even be foreigners are a single continuous civilization then modern Italy is the same civilization as the Roman Republic, Modern Egypt has been a continuous civilization since the Pharaohs and Ethiopia can go back to Lucy the Australopithecine.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 18:43
|
|
|
galagazombie posted:This always annoyed me. If all the different "Dynasties" (which in my opinion is an inaccurate term, I would call them "states" or "empires") which could have radically different religions, territories, ideologies, governments, cultures, or even be foreigners are a single continuous civilization then modern Italy is the same civilization as the Roman Republic, Modern Egypt has been a continuous civilization since the Pharaohs and Ethiopia can go back to Lucy the Australopithecine.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 18:50
|
|
|
galagazombie posted:This always annoyed me. If all the different "Dynasties" (which in my opinion is an inaccurate term, I would call them "states" or "empires") which could have radically different religions, territories, ideologies, governments, cultures, or even be foreigners are a single continuous civilization then modern Italy is the same civilization as the Roman Republic, Modern Egypt has been a continuous civilization since the Pharaohs and Ethiopia can go back to Lucy the Australopithecine. The rulers changed quite a bit but the areas where most people lived were ruled under a single state for a long period of time. It might not have been the same state, but it's a lot longer than, say, India.  Like yes there are significant periods where there are lots of little kingdoms, but a lot of it is the same people ruled under A State of some kind.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:09
|
|
|
computer parts posted:The rulers changed quite a bit but the areas where most people lived were ruled under a single state for a long period of time. It might not have been the same state, but it's a lot longer than, say, India. The argument isn't that they weren't ruled by a state, but that there wasn't a continuous and largely homogenous culture and government for all that time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:30
|
|
|
Please respect 16,000 years of continuous American culture
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:33
|
|
|
Baka-nin posted:The argument isn't that they weren't ruled by a state, but that there wasn't a continuous and largely homogenous culture and government for all that time. The idea of a continuous government doesn't really exist in the West before the Thirty Years War* so I don't know how accurate your assertion actually is. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:36
|
|
|
computer parts posted:The idea of a continuous government doesn't really exist in the West before the Thirty Years War* so I don't know how accurate your assertion actually is. ?????? Okay I knew that and that's not related to what I've said, so that has no relevance to my assertion one way or another. The argument you were responding to is that its disingenuous to claim there's a continuous line of "Chinese civilisation" from the first dynasty to the modern day.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:41
|
|
|
Baka-nin posted:?????? Okay I knew that and that's not related to what I've said, so that has no relevance to my assertion one way or another. The argument you were responding to is that its disingenuous to claim there's a continuous line of "Chinese civilisation" from the first dynasty to the modern day. There is definitely a continuous line of civilization by certain criteria, but by those same criteria plenty of other places have thousands of years of history too. But China for some reason gets weirded out by six thousand years of Egyptian history.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:50
|
|
|
P-Mack posted:There is definitely a continuous line of civilization by certain criteria, but by those same criteria plenty of other places have thousands of years of history too. But China for some reason gets weirded out by six thousand years of Egyptian history. Indeed there are, well for a limited area of the mainland anyway. There's plenty of ways to measure civilisations continuity but the one's I've seen usually used with China a system of government is present on the territory, would also work for plenty of other civilisations and yet the claim just isn't used for any of the others.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 19:56
|
|
|
I think the way China justifies itself as a single continuous civilization is that since the Zhou dynasty was founded Chinese dynasties justified themselves as having the Mandate of Heaven, and therefore were the legitimate rulers of all of China. Periods where China is divided doesn't signify different states, but rather competing claims to the Mandate of Heaven. At least that's how it's been explained to me. This does leave the problem then that other states could make similar claims, and now your fighting about whether the eastern Roman Empire was a direct descendant of the Roman Empire right to its dissolution in the 15th century and whether or not the holy roman emperor or the Russian tsar could claim to be legal inheritors of the imperial mantel and so forth. Leaving totally aside Persian and other middle eastern empires. History is so much fun.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 20:19
|
|
|
Baka-nin posted:?????? Okay I knew that and that's not related to what I've said, so that has no relevance to my assertion one way or another. Actually it does. You explicitly said Chinese people believed that the government has been the same for the past 5000 years. Any idiot can tell you that's not true. Gorau posted:
And this actually happened in Europe basically up until the Ottomans settled the issue (and even then, the Ottomans claimed to be the true successors of the Roman Empire and the Caliphate until 1920).
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 20:28
|
|
|
Gorau posted:I think the way China justifies itself as a single continuous civilization is that since the Zhou dynasty was founded Chinese dynasties justified themselves as having the Mandate of Heaven, and therefore were the legitimate rulers of all of China. Periods where China is divided doesn't signify different states, but rather competing claims to the Mandate of Heaven. At least that's how it's been explained to me. Too bad the entire concept of a continuous Mandate of Heaven dates to the Song dynasty in the late 900's, making it slightly younger than the Germanic divine right of kings / inheritance of Rome, generally dated to Otto I. Or the Caliphate, which until the Ottomans fell had been a continuous conception of existence for 1200 years. Also leaves the issue of combined just under a milenia of rule by various foreigners who either didn't claim it, or claimed it well after their formation (Qin, Mongols, Manchu's, Westerners) Myriarch fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jul 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 20:47
|
|
|
This is an irresponsible discussion in the economy megathread. We are not here to cast doubt on the 5000 years of history of china when your own short history is riddled with inaccuracies. We are here to discuss china's prosperous growth. Continued reckless and irresponsible discussion must be stopped immediately.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2016 20:50
|
|
|
It's 3600 years anyway. My favorite part of the 5000 years bullshit is if you read Chinese writing from the early 20th century, like Sun Yat Sen era, they talk about 4000 years of history. The CCP just stuck on an extra thousand out of nowhere. And then other nationalists inflated their history to match, so in Korea they also talk about 5000 years of history (except the ultra nationalists who stretch it back to 11,000 or so). It also counts clearly fictional figures and emperors ruling for 100 years who introduced humanity to fire and poo poo as "history", which is hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2016 06:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 17, 2024 15:17 |
|
|
Saw this on FT this morning - Private investment in China has slowed to a crawl, and the government is propping up the private sector largely through fiscal stimulus.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2016 13:24
|
|
