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The US made the same bet that the economy would never suffer a downturn. Guess what? Downturn happened and alot of normal folks lost shirts. Every economy eventually recovers. The question is whether China as a country survives as their current social contract is FYGM to the extreme and if the government can't deliver that anymore what would happen?. Companies are slowly moving out of China as they are guaranteed to get burned. Every economy needs good faith and FYGM has none.
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Oct 22, 2017 02:22
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oohhboy posted:The US made the same bet that the economy would never suffer a downturn. Guess what? Downturn happened and alot of normal folks lost shirts. Every economy eventually recovers. The question is whether China as a country survives as their current social contract is FYGM to the extreme and if the government can't deliver that anymore what would happen?. lol i like how white liberals regurgitate talking points from foreign policy and the economist and call it erudition
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Oct 22, 2017 02:44
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Peven Stan posted:lol i like how white liberals regurgitate talking points from foreign policy and the economist and call it erudition Yeah man, the numbers coming out of China is based on facts right? It doesn't matter what the economic system you subscribe to or what the rest of the world functions under. China is end stage FYGM capitalism economy that is self destructive and will destroy itself as certain as death is.
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Oct 22, 2017 02:53
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oohhboy posted:Yeah man, the numbers coming out of China is based on facts right? It doesn't matter what the economic system you subscribe to or what the rest of the world functions under. China is end stage FYGM capitalism economy that is self destructive and will destroy itself as certain as death is. Ok, forjar has been doing that gimmick for far longer than you with more entertaining results
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Oct 22, 2017 02:57
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FYGM capitalism (which is hardly practiced only in one place) may end up being self-destructive but it's not going to be a surgical kind of destruction. It's not like China is going to sink into the sea and everybody else sings kumbaya.
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Oct 22, 2017 02:59
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Peven Stan posted:Ok, forjar has been doing that gimmick for far longer than you with more entertaining results I am not here to entertain you. You don't discuss anything in good faith and why should anybody reward you for that?
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Oct 22, 2017 03:03
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oohhboy posted:I am not here to entertain you. You don't discuss anything in good faith and why should anybody reward you for that? lol you can hardly accuse anyone wanting east asians to shuck and jive for whitey to be acting in good faith, more of a pot kettle attack from you imo
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Oct 22, 2017 03:20
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The thing about economic model is that it can never predict the new plot twist. Multiple Nobel prize winners have gotten predictions horribly wrong. Economic models should be banned from forum discussion.
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Oct 22, 2017 03:27
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whatever7 posted:The US also kept expanding NATO up to Russian's front door, which they didn't do in east Asia. They didn't expend the alliance systems with Japan and Taiwan. Ok, but how would they? In Russia's case: mass abandonment of association with Russia, followed by several years of intermission before NATO starts to slowly expand across that territory. And with some Soviet Republics being so anti-Russia even before forcible annexation in 1939 that they declared independence years ahead of formal independence. Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania were going to band together with whoever they could get to try to prevent being messed with the next time Russia was strong, and that someone was always going to be somehow US aligned. Meanwhile, how do you do the same around China? Russia is already there and not US-friendly. North Korea, well, as long as North Korea exists as separate entity it's not going to be US-friendly. Phillipines if you want to consider that a bordering nation are already as joined up as they'll ever be. Vietnam, eh there's not really going to be a rush after all that occurred. And then you've got a bunch of inland countries that can't be reached without cooperation already with sea-touching countries e.g. Laos doesn't work so well because you'r enot getting Myanmar or Vietnam into it, Various countries between India and China have similar issues, as India is not interested in being made into a mere asset of the US. Afghanistan and Pakistan are tied to the US, but are also not that usable for "countering" China in the state they are. Then you have Post-Soviet states that weren't actually too down on the Soviet Union in the first place, and Mongolia to complete the circle, and they're in between China and Russia so again, not a useful military threat thing. So ultimately, even a really strong desire for the US to surround China in a similar way to how Russia is isolatable with the US itself and Japan on one side, and almost the entirety of Europe plus Turkey on the other side - it's just not practical. Maybe if the US had actually managed to overthrow North Vietnam and just straight up coup all the other leaders bordering China in that general direction.
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Oct 22, 2017 03:37
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You don't even need an economic model as history has taught us endlessly no matter what system you run if you cannot provide the fundamental basics of bread and circuses to the masses your government/country will collapse. FYGM on that scale guarantees this will happen as the masses get less and less just from greed where people with more resources can take more from people with less without any mechanism to stop this.
oohhboy fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 03:44
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fishmech posted:Ok, but how would they? In Russia's case: mass abandonment of association with Russia, followed by several years of intermission before NATO starts to slowly expand across that territory. And with some Soviet Republics being so anti-Russia even before forcible annexation in 1939 that they declared independence years ahead of formal independence. Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania were going to band together with whoever they could get to try to prevent being messed with the next time Russia was strong, and that someone was always going to be somehow US aligned. You surround China by controlling the islands that dictate access to it's littoral waters. Japan, SK, Taiwan, Philippines, and Singapore are all US allies and between them form a defensive line against any Chinese attempt to access the wider ocean. People make a big deal about China doing stuff in central asia or whatever but the terrain there is sufficiently harsh and sparsely populated that it forms a geographic boundary on its own. When you look at where most of China's population is concentrated, China is as much of an island as Japan is, and it's surrounded by US allies. The US hasn't expanded it's treaty alliances in the region all that much because it doesn't really need to; China is geographically contained with what it already has. And even despite that, countries like Vietnam and India are moving closer to the US because of concerns about Chinese aggression.
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Oct 22, 2017 03:58
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Redmark posted:The main thing that's upsetting to me about the Russian angle is that it plays into the classic authoritarian argument against democracies. People already make the argument (no comment about how accurate it is) that ruling classes like the CCP or Gulf monarchies keep a lid on an even wilder populace. That if China was a democracy, people would be voting for war with Japan or whatever. Or alternatively with failed interventions in Iraq or Afghanistan, that the people there are too ignorant and not ready for "real" democracy. elite American liberals don't like democracy 
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Oct 22, 2017 05:12
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Baronjutter posted:The thing is is that China has pretty much no soft power or reach beyond its immediate borders, other than loving up some small garbage commonwealth country's real estate market and some babbys first african imperialism everything horrible china does is contained to its own borders. Russia on the other had are pros at soft power and propaganda and are actively invading, infiltrating, and corrupting other countries. Russia is actively challenging and undermining NATO and europe, China isn't, so China gets treated better than Russia. China also has huge economic relevance to the west, Russia doesn't. Western liberals are racists who don't care if brown third worlders find their societies pulled under the sway of an illiberal, authoritarian China, but literally go insane with rage if the same happens to white Europeans with Russia
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Oct 22, 2017 05:22
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Pakistan in particular has extensive military cooperation and ties to China because of their shared tensions with India, so it's an unlikely candidate for a US balance against China. It always strikes me that we can believe two things about China's economy: either China has the same pitfalls that any country has ahead of it, or we can believe that the inscrutable Orientals have used their crafty mercantile wisdom to beat capitalists at their own game. Since I think Chinese people are human beings and not racist caricatures I have to assume there's a collapse coming at some point.
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Oct 22, 2017 05:54
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Sure, but I don't think that's much of a commitment to make. A crash could mean any number of outcomes, at any point in time. The Asian Financial Crisis happened but it's not like those countries got hosed forever. The comparison is often made to Japan, but if the Chinese economy reaches the same level of development as Japan's did before their crash (many obstacles in the way to say the least) it would be in a dominant position. There just isn't a precedent that can be usefully applied here.
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Oct 22, 2017 06:30
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Redmark posted:Sure, but I don't think that's much of a commitment to make. A crash could mean any number of outcomes, at any point in time. The Asian Financial Crisis happened but it's not like those countries got hosed forever. The comparison is often made to Japan, but if the Chinese economy reaches the same level of development as Japan's did before their crash (many obstacles in the way to say the least) it would be in a dominant position. There just isn't a precedent that can be usefully applied here. There is. It's called the middle income trap, and the only countries that have ever broken out of it are liberal democracies.
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Oct 22, 2017 07:01
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I think China's economy will probably stall out at some point in the near future, the economic reforms necessary to bring its productivity to first-world standards will simply be too unpopular and disruptive to be politically viable. The Chinese middle class is dependent on all of those inefficient state-owed enterprises, and so this is a case where democracy is directly counter to reform.
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 08:20
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Fojar38 posted:There is. It's called the middle income trap, and the only countries that have ever broken out of it are liberal democracies. Singapore is the famous counterexample
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Oct 22, 2017 08:34
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The Great Autismo! posted:if racism is power plus prejudice, none of us can be racist in china, because as foreigners none of us have a single iota of power The average white guy is still brought up in an extremely privileged position and has been indoctrinated from birth that the world view of his parents and peers is indisputably superior. He brings that birth and upbringing with him to a foreign country, even if he is no longer in the same position there. His attitudes then are completely different from a minority in the US, who might have unfair prejudices against people of other skin colors, but is hardly engaging in systematic racism. And to address the bolded part, it's simply not true that foreigners don't have any form of power in China. White European culture still has the status of a prestige culture here and almost everywhere else. The views, attitudes and behavior of white people leave a strong impression on the people here who witness them. This is extremely obvious even if you just spend a month or so here and I could come up with dozens of mundane examples to support it. So foreigners, especially white foreigners, have a very real kind of soft power that is deeply rooted in racial issues, including white racism.
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Oct 22, 2017 09:25
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Bloodnose posted:Singapore is the famous counterexample Weren't South Korea and Taiwan also on track to break out of that trap before they democratised?
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Oct 22, 2017 09:39
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Yeah, South Korea really only fully democratized by the early 1990s when they were already on the way to becoming a higher income country. Taiwan is also an example of this, hell they only really made a democracy in the late 1990s. Also, Japan is very illiberal in many ways, hell you could certainly argue for most of its history it was a managed democracy. I actually don't think "democracy" makes much of a difference besides the fact that the US during the Cold War decided to prioritize trade with certain countries and many (but certainly not all) were democracies in Western Europe/Anglosphere. In Asia, we mostly turned a blind eye. Anyway, I think the continued problem with a discussion of a collapse in China is that we expect it to be run like any other liberal economy when in many ways it is still a command economy. The government has massive influence over hiring and investment, and if the country comes into a crisis it has the ability to swamp out its public institutions with new debt. Is there a limit the Central Bank can do this, yes but it is going to actually take quite a bit of actually stabilize the situation. One thing most videos you see on youtube only talk about total debt, not the make-up of that debt with the exception that every piece of that debt, usually they pretend every piece of debt is essentially in default and in all honesty, this isn't the case. When MBSes went belly up during the 2008 crisis, it didn't mean every house in America was in foreclosure but that the financial industry had way overleveraged itself. The solution was simply for the Fed to buy up that debt, sit on and then gradually sell it off (and the effect on inflation was anything quite mild). I except the Chinese Central Bank to do the same thing. At the same time, the Chinese central government can issue direct stimulus to local governments. Is growth during that crisis, probably and significantly so, but that said unlike the US, China would simply start spending again. If in 2008/2009, the response was to the US crisis was simply to start to spend 3-4 times what we did, in all honesty, it would have ended far sooner. A big issue with the US recession was ideological resistance to even mild Keynesian stimulus.
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Oct 22, 2017 10:00
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Kassad posted:Weren't South Korea and Taiwan also on track to break out of that trap before they democratised? SK and Taiwan and Japan are small enough that the export manufacturing model worked all the way from an impoverished preindustrial to a developed first world economy. China has to find another model that uses internal demand, and I think the burden of proof should be on the side that says they will be successful in doing that It should be noted that the original case of the middle income trap, in Latin America, involved countries which tried to develop in a largely autarkic way, based on internal demand and not on exporting or trade, so that seems like a pretty bad omen for China icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 10:04
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Eh ISI isn't the same thing as autarky. ISI can often work, but most of the military dictatorships that took over Latin America had no idea what they were doing. That said, many of the liberal governments that followed them (like in Argentina) also had no idea what they were doing. Also, the US considered Latin America it's "backyard" rather than a "frontline" during the Cold War, and focused its imports strategy on East Asia/Western Europe. (admittedly the 1960s ISI strategies usually did fine until the energy crises of the 1970s, that is when they were forced to have trade deficits.) China does probably have a limit to its growth based on how much exports it can push in an already saturated market, and that infrastructure/construction stimulus can only go so far. That said, not all of China is modernized at this point and there is still low hanging fruit out there and their birthrate is starting to accelerate again. I don't know if China will ever be the first world, just simply due to the limits of globalization, but at the same time, I expect them to grow faster than Japan did. Also, the US and the West, in general, doesn't seem to be interested in reducing its trade deficits with China...which is always going to help. I think the most likely outcome is "China's rise" is going to slow, but not completely stall. I think India is if anything in a worse position since they are late to the game and have to compete for not only with China for exports but the rest of the developing world as well. Also, it is harder for India to just layout the massive infrastructure investment that China can. Edit: One thing is that a lot of Chinese coastal cities are already starting to look like a city in a "developed country", but there is still a massive disparity between them and the villages themselves. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 10:15
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I don't know how you guys call Japan a developed country just based on some numbers. They work way longer, all live in tiny dwellings and have been living frugally for many years now. If all China has to do is reach that living standard they can easily do that in a couple decades. You can giggle the number all you want, the whole deceloped/developing definition is so outdated in 21st century anyway. I honest think many Chinese cities have better living standard than HK if you go by simple facts such as personal living space, commute time, prospect for the future generations and real world purchase power. You can even throw pollution in there, its possible to find Chinese cities that have low pollution.
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Oct 22, 2017 10:52
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whatever7 posted:I don't know how you guys call Japan a developed country just based on some numbers. They work way longer, all live in tiny dwellings and have been living frugally for many years now. Shhh... that dosent fit the narrative!
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Oct 22, 2017 11:13
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whatever7 posted:its possible to find Chinese cities that have low pollution. True, but ghost cities tend to be p nonpolluting anyway, or at least until one of the apartment slabs falls over.
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Oct 22, 2017 11:46
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http://www.dw.com/en/what-has-become-of-chinas-ghost-cities/a-36525007 Ghost cities exist, but quite a few (not all) fill up in the long-term. The worst ones are usually connected to coal/heavy industries that are now being wound down (not too dissimilar to the rust belt). Supposedly there are still around 20 long-term "ghost cities" in China. Other cities, like a recent Chinese development in Angola, remained vacant until they was (much needed) a price cut. Now it is about 50-60% full. Btw, I wasn't a fan of the "China is going to conquer the world" narrative of the 2000s and I am not a fan of the China is "going to fall apart" narrative of the 2010s. It comes down to simply, both narratives are there to simply there to satisfy Anglo-American economic and geopolitical interests. In the end, China was and is not going to conquer the world, and at the same time, there are also going to be a major world power. Also, China is as authoritarian as it ever was, and we will have to see the actual results to the movement towards "socialism" especially regarding medical care, wages, and social benefits. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Oct 22, 2017 |
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Oct 22, 2017 11:58
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whatever7 posted:I don't know how you guys call Japan a developed country just based on some numbers. They work way longer, all live in tiny dwellings and have been living frugally for many years now. Uh economically Japan is very developed. Working hours and size of living space are basically cultural factors as much as anything else; are you seriously saying that a nation that is *by itself* more than half the population of Western Europe and the third largest national economy in the world is not developed because they have small apartments?
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Oct 22, 2017 12:22
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LimburgLimbo posted:Uh economically Japan is very developed. Working hours and size of living space are basically cultural factors as much as anything else; are you seriously saying that a nation that is *by itself* more than half the population of Western Europe and the third largest national economy in the world is not developed because they have small apartments? I am saying the lives of Japanese people are nothing special and they shouldn't be the aspiration of the Chinese. Also stop using meaningless words such as developed, first world, middle income trap etc. Both China and US are global north, the Chinese CCP and their manufacturing army have a secret pack with the global liberal capitalist 1%er to disenfranchise the "first world" middle class and the suckers in the south.
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Oct 22, 2017 12:32
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whatever7 posted:I am saying the lives of Japanese people are nothing special and they shouldn't be the aspiration of the Chinese. Please source your quotes
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Oct 22, 2017 12:51
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Err what? Throw a bunch of people into a small area and you get small living areas. China is having the same issues by shoving everyone into the coastal cities. Throw in some income inequality and you have people living in closets on a large scale. The pollution in China is so bad when I visited Seoul their air was getting hosed by it and it sure as hell wasn't fog.
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Oct 22, 2017 13:14
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oohhboy posted:Err what? Throw a bunch of people into a small area and you get small living areas. China is having the same issues by shoving everyone into the coastal cities. Throw in some income inequality and you have people living in closets on a large scale. Korea likes to blame china for their pollution but a lot of it is from their own industry.
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Oct 22, 2017 13:16
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Heithinn Grasida posted:And to address the bolded part, it's simply not true that foreigners don't have any form of power in China. White European culture still has the status of a prestige culture here and almost everywhere else. The views, attitudes and behavior of white people leave a strong impression on the people here who witness them. This is extremely obvious even if you just spend a month or so here and I could come up with dozens of mundane examples to support it. So foreigners, especially white foreigners, have a very real kind of soft power that is deeply rooted in racial issues, including white racism. as someone who has lived here for 8 years, this is so  I don't even know where to start
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Oct 22, 2017 13:22
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Korea likes to blame china for their pollution but a lot of it is from their own industry. Yeah, their factories was running full tilt during the Korean version of independence day. I seriously doubt Korean industry alone would produce pollution on such absurd levels.
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Oct 22, 2017 13:24
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Heithinn Grasida posted:And to address the bolded part, it's simply not true that foreigners don't have any form of power in China. White European culture still has the status of a prestige culture here and almost everywhere else. The views, attitudes and behavior of white people leave a strong impression on the people here who witness them. This is extremely obvious even if you just spend a month or so here and I could come up with dozens of mundane examples to support it. So foreigners, especially white foreigners, have a very real kind of soft power that is deeply rooted in racial issues, including white racism. this is almost a conversation that needs to happen personally. I'd be honored to host you in Shenyang, or if you wanna meet at a bar in your city, that'd be cool too. but this point is just so jarringly wrong I don't even really know where to start, and would love to talk to you about 8 years of experiences, of books I've read, and of people I've talked to about how just drastically incorrect this entire paragraph is. lemme know!
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Oct 22, 2017 13:26
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oohhboy posted:Err what? Throw a bunch of people into a small area and you get small living areas. China is having the same issues by shoving everyone into the coastal cities. Throw in some income inequality and you have people living in closets on a large scale. Japan actually has a lot of empty space outside of the big cities. So do Hong Kong. Their villages are literally deserted. The issue I am talking about is you are forced to cramped in the big cities to make the livings.
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Oct 22, 2017 13:34
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whatever7 posted:Japan actually has a lot of empty space outside of the big cities. So do Hong Kong. Their villages are literally deserted. Mountains and farmland are not that conducive to supporting a ton of people while staying intact.
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Oct 22, 2017 13:40
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fishmech posted:Mountains and farmland are not that conducive to supporting a ton of people while staying intact. Well if CCP run out of infrastructure to build, they can build a nationwide fiber/5G network.
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Oct 22, 2017 14:03
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Granted, in both the case of China/Japan, the issue is simply there isn't much out there for people to stay. Of course, this is detrimental to birthrates as young people moving to big cities are naturally going to have fewer children (especially as more of them become educated). That said, China still has peasants (or at least children of peasants) in the countryside that can essentially keep birthrates from collapsing. In the case of Japan, I have no idea what is going to happen since their demographical graphs look like an inverted triangle at this point.
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Oct 22, 2017 14:18
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whatever7 posted:I don't know how you guys call Japan a developed country just based on some numbers. They work way longer, all live in tiny dwellings and have been living frugally for many years now. Hot take.
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Oct 22, 2017 16:15
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