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and even aside from all of that, there are presumably a fuckload of people who simply cannot afford to move there's a reason there are still black people in mississippi and alabama uprooting your entire life is either expensive or basically zeroes out your savings, depending on your situation, it turns out
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Aug 16, 2023 05:53
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Anecdotal but around 75% of the houses I've viewed in Hong Kong over the past year have been owned by people who are emigrating, mostly to the UK. A lot of them are waiting to sell up before moving, some already left. It's a difficult time to sell because the market is in a downturn and interest rates are very high, so those waiting to sell have been doing so for quite a while in general. Some are listing their properties at a million or two HKD under the bank valuation to encourage a quick sale.
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Aug 16, 2023 06:00
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MikeC posted:Interesting. From my extended family and contacts, it was pretty clear-cut, and the moment the law passed they basically popped their escape hatches right away. Those who remain were deadset against leaving. Everyone is different I suppose. There seems to be a bit of a negative network effect that I didn't expect. I knew a lot of people who were deadset on staying but then realized that it's just not home anymore when a lot of your friends and family have left. I've also recently noticed a ton more highly talented people from the mainland moving to HK as a stepping stone to 润 because they don't think they'd be able to get a job farther afield. I've had multiple people in interviews share this motivation openly with me, with some even offering to take a significant pay cuts to join my team...
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Aug 16, 2023 14:50
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New fad : come to HK from the mainland as part of some talent scheme and once you get a HK passport, easily migrate to USA or Europe!
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Aug 16, 2023 15:40
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I imagine that there would also be phases of exodus every time there's another big PRC crackdown making everybody reassess whether that was the last straw, which people will change their minds just as much from what point they're at in their lives as they will from the severity and specifics of the crackdown. In the modern era, you also get a very fuzzy area of immigration where people won't necessarily leave forever, because they can come back and visit every so often. Some people may even get stuck with a foot in both worlds for as long as possible until something cuts them off. And on the other side of fuzzy immigration, there's all the allegations about the PRC policing expat communities.
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Aug 16, 2023 17:51
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https://twitter.com/adamkwolfe/status/1690019615705837568 In particular: https://twitter.com/adamkwolfe/status/1690021574299004929 An interesting symmetry, that... Re: Hong Kong, the crust of Anglophone elite was never all that deep. I suspect there may be a moment, akin to the unceremonious Cantonese-to-putonghua transition in HK offices today, where the cohorts of Hong Konger who went to an elite English-medium high school and then tertiary education in the UK - with reams of social contacts in churches, Anglophone theatre/media groups, Western-rooted NGOs, MNCs, etc. - seamlessly switch to cohorts of mainlanders who do initially speak English fluently in an elite Beijing high school/later US degree sense, but are entirely used to an administrative language that is not English and will find it easier to code-switch to that instead, and whose elite social circle skews mainland SOE. And then what is left is indistinguishable from a grubbier Guangdong SEZ city, and social change will be swift.
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Aug 16, 2023 18:49
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https://twitter.com/henrysgao/status/1692063149468606834 Okay, petty, but I laughed.
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Aug 17, 2023 14:11
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https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/chinas-major-state-banks-sell-dollars-yuan-london-ny-hours-sources-2023-08-17/ Currency manipulation in broad daylight or macroeconomics with Chinese characteristics?
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Aug 17, 2023 15:22
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PBOC cutting rates to fight deflation and then the state banks buying RMB to hold the RMB stable is a bit ???
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Aug 17, 2023 15:53
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Beefeater1980 posted:No it doesn’t. China is absolutely playing silly buggers with its neighbours, but China is not pursuing an imperial policy in SEA; it’s pursuing a hegemonic one like the US does in South America. As far as I can tell, China’s foreign policy objective for SEA is to influence countries to take their lead from China where possible, and be neutral where not, and if there’s something it really cares about like natural resources, maintain access to them somehow. This is like arguing about whether the Bismarck was sunk or scuttled except with foreign policy
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Aug 17, 2023 20:42
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neurobasalmedium posted:This is like arguing about whether the Bismarck was sunk or scuttled except with foreign policy If not for the ideological anathema of imperialism the U.S. for example probably would have kept the Philippines though? Like “is the Philippines a country” is hardly semantic
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Aug 17, 2023 21:35
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Outright imperial control via military force is pretty evident in the SCS, yea - nobody else in Southeast Asia agreed to a annual fishing ban to be helpfully policed by the Chinese coast guard if the goal of PBOC forex policy is to stimulate the dollar it seems strange to think the Fed simply won't sterilise any release of dollars, given that the US is at target employment - not that this is stopping Chinese columnists from pre-emptively complaining about it - https://twitter.com/Joel_P_Atkinson/status/1691982471334891618
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Aug 18, 2023 03:42
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That's a bit offensive given their exports of fentanyl. https://apnews.com/article/china-economy-xi-jinping-31f7da267b90d5b9c0136734bd63c155 quote:BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for patience in a speech released as the ruling Communist Party tries to reverse a deepening economic slump and said Western countries are “increasingly in trouble” because of their materialism and “spiritual poverty.” Apparently this is not materialism of the historical kind.
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Aug 18, 2023 04:56
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i fly airplanes posted:That's a bit offensive given their exports of fentanyl. Here is a machine translation of the original to see it in context. Am I to understand this is an old speech? Chinese-style Modernization: The Broad Avenue to National Strength and National Rejuvenation - Qiushi Website www.qstheory.cn posted:Source: "Qiushi" 2023/16 Author: Xi Jinping 2023-08-15 15:04:23
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Aug 18, 2023 05:56
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ronya posted:PBOC cutting rates to fight deflation and then the state banks buying RMB to hold the RMB stable is a bit ??? More missed payments keeping everyone jittery always keeps my workweek interesting
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Aug 18, 2023 07:35
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ronya posted:PBOC cutting rates to fight deflation and then the state banks buying RMB to hold the RMB stable is a bit ??? Two entities working at cross purposes, both with monetary policy tools. Fundamentally the issue is really weak Chinese domestic demand which is a huge structural problem that's been papered over in the past with massive state spending, but that's reaching its limit as productive investment outlets are minimal and state debt is rising. Thats why real estate is suffering first, but other sectors have some impact (though deflation seems to really be concentrated in a few areas and the rest are fine). Exports also helped but China left its economic sweet spot in the 00s and has been putting off a badly needed restructuring. Eventually China needs to let the exchange rate adjust to a natural level but the issue is that it's two (really, three, but we will ignore rural areas) economies in a trench coat. One section of the economy wants a lower exchange rate to boost exports and manufacturing, another wants a higher exchange rate for imports and finance. Either the government rides out the current climate, which is very possible because they're pretty competent, or it has to make a decision that leads a lot of people very unhappy with them (but is good for long run growth).
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Aug 19, 2023 17:44
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https://twitter.com/JChengWSJ/status/1693118410006089964 https://twitter.com/Lingling_Wei/status/1693268749699141964 Full article text: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/15w1jwt/chinas_40year_boom_is_over_what_comes_next/jwyizwe/ quote:Guizhou, one of the poorest provinces in the country with GDP per capita of less than $7,200 last year, boasts more than 1,700 bridges and 11 airports, more than the total number of airports in China’s top four cities. The province had an estimated $388 billion in outstanding debt at the end of 2022, and in April had to ask for aid from the central government to shore up its finances. Anyway, Japan didn't stop building bridges to nowhere and railways to villages for a decade after the bubble had clearly popped. China is not immune to the same underlying politics. "What if you did only high-quality development, and not the low-quality development" is not a policy, shall we say. quote:“Some people believe that development means investing in projects and scaling up investments,” he said, while warning, “you can’t walk the old path with new shoes.” Xi and his team so far have done little to shift away from the country’s old growth model. Referring to the March 2022 speech at the Central Party School, where Xi boldly asked local officials to neither prioritize excessively short-term needs nor excessively long-term hypotheticals, but to strike the right balance (the location of said balance is left as an exercise for the reader). There was a later speech where Xi laid out the interpretation more precisely, actually quote:https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-08/31/content_5707604.htm For all this talk, the problem lies in what local policies are rewarded and what are not. Provinces rushing into investments in (say) mature semiconductor processes that are already oversupplied is already criticised by some Chinese columnists (e.g. a couple days after the Central Party School speech) but it is what is safe to invest in; surely safer than "lifestyle" industries than might be crushed by some moral panic without warning. ronya fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Aug 20, 2023 |
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Aug 20, 2023 17:18
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Lingling Wei is a great China source both for the quality of her work, but also her sources (her grandfather was an OG Long Marcher). This is probably the best element from that article: https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/1693306965022171191 For those who can't see twitter, it's a background quote that Xi is unwilling to loosen direct control over the economy by boosting consumption. Which is basically what needs to happen eventually.
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Aug 20, 2023 23:07
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They already know they need to boost consumption - dual circulation &c. But this is one of those things that is easier to say than to do. ("grey rhino", you say?) I am not on board with Pettis's argument that rebalancing could only take place through increasing wages, or that class frictions are what drive these decisions. China could, e.g., pour more into healthcare or even military expenditure. Those things are consumption! In fact, even big capital infrastructure can be consumption as long as one does not instruct local governments and banks to maintain a fiction that it will pay for itself in the long term (and therefore not to provide credit, make demand projections, etc. on that fiction). The problem is the reverse - if one thinks one will grow at 5-6% on average over the next decade then many of these projects do make sense as a capitalized investment. That is, this is the forecast that is politically mandatory to indulge (here Pettis's structural argument that the growth target drives the level of debt is persuasive, I think). The expectation of long-term growth is what makes more bridges to nowhere and highways into the mountains difficult to oppose, where each local or regional slowdown justifies bigger projects rather than being an argument for revising long-term growth estimates. I don't think military preparedness as such is the driving concern either: transport infrastructure has diminishing returns as late Sovietesque dual use goes. Upgrading a gravel track to a paved road, or putting in a railway, is logistically transformative, but after that there are sharp diminishing military returns to transport infrastructure. HSR and eight-lane elevated dual carriageways focusing on inter-city connectivity are ultimately about civilian traffic. There's a standard boomeresque suspicion of new economy "irrational" consumerism in that invented-after-35yo way, but there is not an objection to e.g. domestic tourism as such.  Pictured: the massive elevated G40 highway across Jiangsu where the cost of elevation for that entire length will very definitely pay off more than adjacent rural farmland it carefully preserves. Cough. Sorry, this is unfair, I know, but I saw this photo recently and it brought this observation back to mind - too reminiscent of megaprojects I saw in the leadup to the 1997 AFC. Back when the Shanghai metropolitan agglomeration was still ceaselessly expanding, such investment in elevated highways made sense - everything to the left and right would eventually be absorbed into the city anyway (for perspective, the population density pictured here would have to increase about 500% to match that level of infrastructure justification). But when it comes to Jiangsu today the more likely outcome is prioritizing emissions reduction, shutting down pollutive light factories, etc. for the benefit of existing major cities on the Yangtze delta., so there's good odds this will become part of a green belt/bedroom community instead. Of course Chinese observers are not stupid and since the ~2014 there is already a resentment amongst academic observers, very reminiscent of Japanese domestic observers in the 1990s, of the looming white elephants but what else would rationalize 5% growth drat it? Megaprojects are always the easy answer that can find ready business community support. ronya fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Aug 21, 2023 |
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Aug 21, 2023 07:26
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Can't wait for arrested brics development to get weirdo paranoid goldbugs to shut up about the impending brics takeover of the reserve currency standard
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Aug 23, 2023 13:50
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having to stabilize and export CNH at this juncture must particularly annoy the PBoC when it's simultaneously being told to attract foreign investment (which tightening capital controls would scare off) and to stimulate domestic investment the natsec'y flavour of avoiding the perceived threat to US-settled foreign trade seems to be winning though strangest outcome would be China gradually blowing through its massive dollar asset hoard on a quixotic quest to uphold the CNY and yet stimulate it at the same time, thereby inadvertently triggering hot money repatriation to the US over 2024
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Aug 23, 2023 14:59
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A thought on a headline in the financial press: https://twitter.com/Sino_Market/status/1695745078831059024  (a problem with the brutal crash being that provoking a rise again when desired can be difficult!) https://twitter.com/ShanghaiMacro/status/1695737350792298861 It's very knob-twiddling which suggests a directive for assorted departments to find ways to turn lending into growth, but not a specific vision in mind ronya fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 18:13
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Taiwan-elections/Foxconn-s-Terry-Gou-announces-bid-for-Taiwan-s-presidencyNikkei Asia posted:TAIPEI -- Terry Gou, founder of iPhone assembler Foxconn, said on Monday he would make an independent bid for Taiwan's presidency, adding to an increasingly crowded field for the January 2024 ballot. Seems very unlikely he will win and just split the softer on China factions even more. No idea why he finally pulled the trigger (besides massive ego.) The election was already Lai vs. Ko, and there is no way Gou will take away any significant DPP voters.
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Aug 28, 2023 03:52
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GoutPatrol posted:https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Taiwan-elections/Foxconn-s-Terry-Gou-announces-bid-for-Taiwan-s-presidency
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Aug 28, 2023 09:48
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Has there been any public comment by China about how Russia is continuously getting smashed by Ukraine and how even last-generation US/NATO tech outclasses the best Russia has on tap? You would think this might concern the PLA...
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Aug 29, 2023 21:39
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Rust Martialis posted:Has there been any public comment by China about how Russia is continuously getting smashed by Ukraine and how even last-generation US/NATO tech outclasses the best Russia has on tap? You would think this might concern the PLA... I think the PLA is pretty content with watching the continued great importance of artillery dominance, manpower advantage, production capacity and the enormous benefits of mass deployment of drones.
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Aug 29, 2023 21:54
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Zudgemud posted:I think the PLA is pretty content with watching the continued great importance of artillery dominance, manpower advantage, production capacity and the enormous benefits of mass deployment of drones. I suppose China is well-placed to invade Russia on that score.
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Aug 29, 2023 22:06
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Rust Martialis posted:Has there been any public comment by China about how Russia is continuously getting smashed by Ukraine and how even last-generation US/NATO tech outclasses the best Russia has on tap? You would think this might concern the PLA... In many ways, the PLA is technologically more advanced than the RuAF. Airpower for example is one area where the Chinese have a huge edge over the Russians. The PLAF is the only country, besides the US and the allies that has access to the F35, which owns a plausible 5th gen fighter aircraft fleet with the J-20 being introduced back in 2016. Technically the Russians have the Felon but it is unlikely they have more than a couple dozen built vs. the 200+ airframes the Chinese are known to operate (with more coming online every year). The real question isn't technological, it is whether the PLA which has never seen real combat since 1979 is capable of putting that technology to use against a capable opponent. The Russian army that came down on Ukraine didn't lose because their tech was outdated or because the Ukrainians had Western weapons waiting for them. Remember the Ukrainians stopped the Russians outside Kyiv largely on the back of upgraded Soviet-era technology. The Russians lost because of poor planning by an incompetent general staff working assumptions that were not based on real life. The question that likely keeps the PLA up at night is whether their technology and doctrine will actually work in wartime vs the Americans whose technology and personnel have been battle-tested time and time again since the end of the Cold War should a conventional confrontation erupt. Ex. Is the J-20 actually stealthy enough vis a vis the American competition and whether the USAF has successfully hidden capabilities on US airframes that the PLAF are not aware of.
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Aug 30, 2023 03:28
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Some say that America's greatest asset that gives them the edge is their air power but has that really been tested in battle since the Gulf War in early 90's? I guess operations in Balkans happened in non-permissive airspace but that is still a far cry from what is happening in Ukraine these days. Other than those, American air power has seen a lot of work but bombing dirt without threat doesn't really give an idea what peer to peer kind of conflict would be like. But then again I personally think that American military's greatest strenght is their unbelievable logistics and that is being put to use every day throughout the world.
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Aug 30, 2023 04:53
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an observation: https://twitter.com/wentisung/status/1696705586740772912 seems like a by-product of relative party discipline between the post-democratization KMT and the DPP, e.g. James Soong was rewarded for splitting the vote in 2000 by being selected as running mate in 2004, rather than being exiled from the party
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Aug 30, 2023 06:01
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Rust Martialis posted:Has there been any public comment by China about how Russia is continuously getting smashed by Ukraine and how even last-generation US/NATO tech outclasses the best Russia has on tap? You would think this might concern the PLA... Could you explain a little more why you think they would be concerned? Dante80 fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 07:34
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ronya posted:an observation: James Soong probably should have been exiled based off of the corruption scandal with him in 98. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_frigate_scandal But I'm guessing that everyone in the KMT has some of level of that going on at the time...and probably now
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Aug 30, 2023 07:42
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Dante80 posted:Could you explain a little more why you think they would be concerned? The bulk of their current-gen military equipment is based on Russian/Soviet stuff, although they have quite significant amounts of homegrown kit too.
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Aug 30, 2023 07:43
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Rust Martialis posted:I suppose China is well-placed to invade Russia on that score. Well assuming the nukes would be made out of spun sugar and rainbows that would be the option because any campaign that requires a trip over the sea towards a decently equipped enemy would always be doomed. Anti air and anti shipping missiles are simply just death to such plans even if the navy and airforce happens to not be a underfunded shambling mess like Russias.
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Aug 30, 2023 07:44
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China's military budget is more than triple that of Russia's, I don't think you can really compare how they would fight usefully. The war in Ukraine is also strange from a US-China conflict perspective, because the use of air power is heavily constrained by the low tech level of the air forces involved. We're beginning to get excited about Ukraine getting access to the F16, a forty-five-year-old airframe, sometime in the next year or so. I can't imagine a situation where a war involving China would end up looking like the war in Ukraine.
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Aug 30, 2023 09:23
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A contrary thread from a relative China bull: https://twitter.com/GlennLuk/status/1696535125528654008 https://twitter.com/GlennLuk/status/1696535137381752901 https://twitter.com/GlennLuk/status/1696535154217586731 None of this actually contradicts the Pettis thesis; Pettis talks about financial repression of households a lot. This does not necessarily imply less saving, particularly in a country with a shoddy social safety net (apropos). The mistake that both make is that what makes investment investment is whether or not the owner then behaves as if it will generate claims on future income. And Chinese households obviously do not think of their homes as depreciating assets akin to, say, Japanese homeowners (or even Singapore leaseholders). GoutPatrol posted:James Soong probably should have been exiled based off of the corruption scandal with him in 98. It does remain deeply weird that frozen assets in legal limbo are all that distinguish the KMT from being the one of the world's wealthiest political parties and insolvent. ronya fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Aug 30, 2023 |
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Aug 30, 2023 16:02
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Other than SAM systems which seem to me to be largely working as intended based on what's happening in Ukraine, I'm not sure what aspect of former Soviet kit that China still fields for its A-category equivalent formations? Both their small arms and AFV/IFV development diverged significantly from the Soviet model at least two decades ago. I don't think it's really applicable whatever happens to be distributed to reserve or B-category formations as they're not likely to enter into combat with a peer power except if poo poo hits the fan. China has a large manufacturing base, more money, and more advanced native industry (i.e chips); and Russian missiles, electronic warfare systems and so on, all seem to be competitive and also doing their jobs, things like Russian tires bursting from poor maintenance and storage practices doesn't seem to me like an indictment of the quality of the "designs" but a problem with organization, training, discipline/readiness etc and there isn't really indication that China is lacking in these categories?
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Aug 30, 2023 21:54
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For any prospective US-China war, the only Russian-derived equipment of any significance would be the Flanker derivatives: J-11, J-15, J-16. The Flanker is a perfectly good airframe and in any event only the airframe and some of the engines are Russian. The electronics and weapons are all homegrown.
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Aug 31, 2023 02:08
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tractor fanatic posted:For any prospective US-China war, the only Russian-derived equipment of any significance would be the Flanker derivatives: J-11, J-15, J-16. The Flanker is a perfectly good airframe and in any event only the airframe and some of the engines are Russian. The electronics and weapons are all homegrown. And one of their aircraft carriers. And quite a few of their jet transports and bombers.
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Aug 31, 2023 02:28
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Fair call on the transports, but it doesn't seem likely either the carrier nor the strategic bombers are going to have much of a role to play
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Aug 31, 2023 02:32
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