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Atopian posted:I will admit that China news has been fairly boring lately. Given the state of the Chinese economy these days and likely to only worsen, I’m guessing in we’ll be experiencing the classic Confucianism “may you live in interesting times” pretty soon. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-economy-debt-slowdown-recession-622a3be4
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Aug 22, 2023 19:59
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sticksy posted:Given the state of the Chinese economy these days and likely to only worsen, I’m guessing in we’ll be experiencing the classic Confucianism “may you live in interesting times” pretty soon. Xi straight up said that young adults who can't find jobs should learn to 'Eat Bitterness'. I'm wondering what the ramifications would be for the rest of the world if China's property bubble goes pop.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:18
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:Xi straight up said that young adults who can't find jobs should learn to 'Eat Bitterness'. not as bad as the american one for two reasons: 1) you frequently do not "own" property in china, you lease it from the state for a very long time (like 70 years). i think there are some loopholes and exceptions surrounding this, but internationally this distinction matters a lot, so other countries don't have investments into chinese real estate the same way they did (and do!) for american real estate 2) a lot of the property in question was built and then never occupied to begin with, which makes them dead assets on a specific company or state agency's ledger, rather than undervalued assets held by a financial firm responsible for hundreds or thousands of people that said, the bubble is still gigantic so it's stupid to understate it or pretend like everything will be fine. i suspect there's a number of firms with exposure to that stuff that don't even know it yet.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:25
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I'm already eating bitter melon. Is that good enough?
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Aug 22, 2023 20:25
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Coolguye posted:that said, the bubble is still gigantic so it's stupid to understate it or pretend like everything will be fine. i suspect there's a number of firms with exposure to that stuff that don't even know it yet. I thought most Chinese banks hold a lot of commercial loans to real estate development companies. One thing I'm wondering is how Xi will handle a larger systemic bank confidence issue. You can't break up the protest and step on the loud ones until they go away when 5-15% of the country is wondering if the money in the bank exists in a way they can spend.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:45
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:I thought most Chinese banks hold a lot of commercial loans to real estate development companies. One thing I'm wondering is how Xi will handle a larger systemic bank confidence issue. You can't break up the protest and step on the loud ones until they go away when 5-15% of the country is wondering if the money in the bank exists in a way they can spend. there's definitely some of that but it's an open question how much. it could also come out that the way a lot of these development contracts were done is completely different from how most other countries do it and the contagion was spread to tons of banks and other firms right away, before it was sold off and inhabited. that would be a lot worse than the situation i'm presuming. nobody knows really because chinese firms don't tell anyone, even other chinese firms. what we know right now strongly indicates that, pound for pound, a chinese bubble would not be anywhere near as impactful or devastating as the american bubble. but, uh, there's 5x more pounds there so it doesn't need to be in order to kick the world's rear end.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:52
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Coolguye posted:not as bad as the american one for two reasons: You are right about the Chinese real estate market being less exposed to global financial markets and not being systematically important like the US was in 2007/08. However, real estate has come to encompass a far higher % of GDP in China than any other industrialized nations. And you are forgetting the part where individual citizens have few legit investment vehicles so they have poured their and their entire families' wealth into buying apartments, in many cases, multiple ones.  That, combined with a lack of property tax meaning that local governments needed to sell/lease land and do it at an accelerating rate to maintain growth targets, means that there are a lot of potential fallout to come. Of course there won't be mass protests of any sort since Xi forbids it but as we found out during the Great Recession, these can have unknown, cascading effects.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:53
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sticksy posted:You are right about the Chinese real estate market being less exposed to global financial markets and not being systematically important like the US was in 2007/08. yea, domestically a real estate bubble in china will be utterly devastating. no question there.
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Aug 22, 2023 20:57
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bamhand posted:I'm already eating bitter melon. Is that good enough?
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Aug 22, 2023 21:46
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I left off record youth unemployment. That's been in the news a lot and the fact China decided to stop publishing statistics on it after hitting record highs. So 3 things - birth rates plummeting, unemployment among the young spiking and a highly uncertain real estate market which could impact the real estate /development industry, local government income, and personal wealth.
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Aug 22, 2023 23:11
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This is great for bitcoin.
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Aug 22, 2023 23:21
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Big rear end On Fire posted:I left off record youth unemployment. That's been in the news a lot and the fact China decided to stop publishing statistics on it after hitting record highs.
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Aug 22, 2023 23:22
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Big rear end On Fire posted:I left off record youth unemployment. That's been in the news a lot and the fact China decided to stop publishing statistics on it after hitting record highs. The three key ingredients for making failed state s'mores. All you have to do once they're combined is add fire.
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Aug 22, 2023 23:48
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McGavin posted:This is great for bitcoin. it's (potentially) a great thing for NFTs though there's more people getting past the dumbass apes and putting NFTs showing ownership of stuff like watches and jewelry on the blockchain. if they actually do it rather than play at it and disappear after raising money, a system like that could allow a chinese millionaire to shove a few dozen luxury watches up their rear end and resell them in germany at more or less full price because they didn't lose the 'certificate of authenticity'.
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Aug 22, 2023 23:48
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:The three key ingredients for making failed state s'mores. All you have to do once they're combined is add fire. no, the important thing about states is the monopoly on violence and they've held onto it with a vicious iron fist. they're idiots and fuckups but you're still more likely to be subject to random or nonstate political violence anywhere else now, state political violence...
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Aug 23, 2023 00:03
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:The three key ingredients for making failed state s'mores. All you have to do once they're combined is add fire. Also the US did something from WSJ: quote:U.S. to Sanction Chinese Officials for Forcible Assimilation of Tibetans
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Aug 23, 2023 01:55
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Big rear end On Fire posted:There’s some doom articles. I don’t know what to believe. I think for me it comes down to could things get bad enough for the Chinese people to buck the increasingly authoritarian government and it’s policies , particularly after having the taste of relative freedom and a surge of prosperity. No idea. There seems to be a lot of folks that truly buy into a strong government is good through thick and thin but I’m not there or living it as a local so? I mean, the Xi would rather an entire province burn to the ground before he admits fault, or relinquish power, but Xi is also a pretty old dude now. He's also centralized power massively, fully vested in himself, with no successor. I think a combination of a large unemployed and underemployed population, 10+ years of rising tension, and Xi going off to the 100 acre wood in the sky will cause poo poo to boil over.
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Aug 23, 2023 19:24
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I'd just like to remind any Americans in the audience that revolution is just one of many, many potential consequences of major civil unrest. "Brutal repression followed by simmering tension" is a common alternative, so is "coup by people promising to fix everything who manage to appear to do so enough to keep a lid on things, or at least consolidate power enough to keep anyone from complaining."
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Aug 23, 2023 19:31
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So is "coup by people who redirect blame outwards and try to establish their bona fides with ultranationalist aggression"; see the Falkland Islands.
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Aug 23, 2023 19:55
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Also, China is big enough, and the military fractured enough, that you could quite easily have one of the army groups overthrow the government in just the Nanjing region. Without a strong central authority, you end up with lots of strong local and regional authorities, and like magic you're back in the warring states era.
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Aug 23, 2023 19:58
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or the imperial japanese move of killing anyone and everyone who even utters the word peace until peace is now unthinkable for anyone who doesnt wanna get beheaded by some junior officer
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Aug 23, 2023 20:07
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re: what to believe and what is coming: people have been predicting doom in china for decades and it has literally never turned out the way they say or even in the same ballpark. if you want to stand on solid prognosticating ground, look at what the CCP is actively claiming it will do, and look at how history has turned out for them on that. and even then, you're liable to be proven wrong on some level, because "you don't understand china" extends to the Chinese government that has cultivated a culture of systemic lying for generations. or, put another way: unless you're doing business in China, there's no points or medals for predicting what will happen there. further, it's pretty much impossible to make an informed prediction because every system lies to every other system in China. for outsiders, the systems lie twice just to be sure. what we know is that bad times are ahead. that's pretty much it. we hope that the times are as gentle on your average Chinese citizen as they are hard on the average CCP abuser. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Aug 23, 2023 |
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Aug 23, 2023 20:17
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gordon chang will be right at some point!
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Aug 23, 2023 20:23
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Coolguye posted:people have been predicting doom in china for decades and it has literally never turned out the way they say or even in the same ballpark. if you want to stand on solid prognosticating ground, look at what the CCP is actively claiming it will do, and look at how history has turned out for them on that. and even then, you're liable to be proven wrong on some level, because "you don't understand china" extends to the Chinese government that has cultivated a culture of systemic lying for generations.
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Aug 23, 2023 20:24
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Another outcome is 'the people are utterly disposable and powerless and can be killed in droves with no consequences' recently demonstrated by Great Power Russia
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Aug 23, 2023 21:20
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Big rear end On Fire posted:Yeah I think the most likely path moving forward is more of the same - central gov gets stronger, politically connected get wealthier and the average person's life gets a little worse some times, a little better others. But individual rights and expression post Xi: If things are worse for people then it's hard to imagine a government that relaxes anything and instead clamps down on information, money, travel, religion whatever even more. i don't think anyone really knows what a post-Xi china looks like at this point much the same way we really don't know what a post-Putin russia looks like. Xi has more or less speedrun becoming the god-emperor of the CCP and has been very methodical in purging anyone who's even remotely as popular or connected as he is. but even in modern-ish times, China has dealt with that before. nobody had any clue what a post-Mao china would look like. then Deng Xioping said some poo poo about cats and everything changed. life's funny like that.
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Aug 23, 2023 21:31
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the basic problem is that bo xilai really did kill that dude and zhou yongkang really did steal 10 figures so you coulda guessed maybe deng xiaoping would come back from making truck parts but these dudes aint coming back
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Aug 23, 2023 21:40
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If the trajectory of 1990s Asian values discourse is any guide to 2020s 中华优秀传统文化同科学社会主义 fusionism ("Chinese traditional civilization with scientific socialism"), the eventual outcome of perceptibly slowing growth will be domestic panic over rote learning and hypercompetitive examinations (meshed with middle-class unease over the costs of preparing children for the rat race) and graduate overproduction (meshed with technocratic unease over stagnant factor productivity growth), leading thence to calls to promote creativity and innovation instead of the past decade of slogans like 体现中华文化精髓、反映中国人审美追求、传播当代中国价值观念、又符合世界进步潮流的优秀作品 ("Chinese traditional values, Chinese aesthetic values, contemporary Chinese values, and yet modernized to conform to global fashions") that explicitly endorse conformism today This won't necessarily equate to calls for political liberalization as such (c.f. 1990s Asian values discourse), but would be instead be embedded in a language about progress and modernizing notions of the good life (as Xi-speak already foreshadows). Akin to calling on park operators to improve the decor: it might please the zoo animals but it's not because the inhabitants were entitled to it. Expect angles popular with the middle class like conservationism, greenism, animal rights, feminism & family law reform, and ex-con rehabilitation: things that do not overtly challenge party rule, or even promote it as the channel for pursuing justice. The quietly accumulating problem for the state at this point would be that 1) an increasing amount of grumbling will be from factions that will feel they have "done their time" working within the system and hence raising expectations for procedural outcomes, 2) as the era of wild west corruption recedes into the background, expectations for predictable governance and systemization increase, further driving expectations of procedurally predictable outcomes, and 3) as the political space shifts toward said middle-class angles that do not plausibly pose an existential threat, the threat of massive lethal force becomes harder and harder to dangle. At the same time, neither giving in nor firmly resisting these demands appreciably moves the needle on growth or continuing rural poverty, and inevitable-rise triumphalism quietly erodes into pessimism and cynicism. e: relevant https://www.gingerriver.com/p/how-to-understand-chinas-governance ronya fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Aug 24, 2023 |
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Aug 24, 2023 16:19
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China has banned imports of all seafood from Japan. It's a big problem for Japan and a huge problem for Hong Kong people who will be denied Japanese crab this winter. https://japantoday.com/category/politics/China-bans-all-Japanese-seafood China bans all Japanese seafood imports after Fukushima water release (published Aug 24, 2023) China on Thursday announced an immediate blanket ban on all seafood imports from Japan after the Japanese government started releasing treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean. China is "highly concerned about the risk of radioactive contamination brought by... Japan's food and agricultural products exported to China," a Chinese customs official said in a statement. Signed off two years ago by the Japanese government and approved by the U.N. nuclear watchdog last month, the discharge is a key step in a dauntingly long and difficult process of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi plant after it was destroyed by a tsunami. However, China reiterated on Thursday its firm opposition to the plan and said the Japanese government had not proved the legitimacy of the water discharge. "The Japanese side should not cause secondary harm to the local people and even the people of the world out of its own selfish interests," China's foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Tokyo has in turn criticized China for spreading "scientifically unfounded claims." It maintains the water release is safe, noting that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also concluded that the impact it would have on people and the environment was "negligible." Japan exported about $600 million worth of aquatic products to China in 2022, making it the biggest market for Japanese exports, with Hong Kong second. Sales to China and Hong Kong accounted for 42% of all Japanese aquatic exports in 2022, according to government data.
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Aug 25, 2023 12:51
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Why buy it when you can just say gently caress it and illegally hoover it all up yourself for free?
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Aug 25, 2023 13:19
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peanut posted:
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Aug 25, 2023 14:37
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ummmmm pointing out the irony only serves to lose face yourself
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Aug 25, 2023 16:09
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Japanese fish is too radioactive. Now hold on while we open 20 coal power plants this week.
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Aug 25, 2023 16:56
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China with the extremely well-timed decision on something from 2011
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Aug 25, 2023 18:04
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The 400 strong fishing vessel fleet raiding the Galapagos will ensure the chinese hunger for seafood will be fulfilled.
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Aug 25, 2023 18:51
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Methylethylaldehyde posted:Also, China is big enough, and the military fractured enough, that you could quite easily have one of the army groups overthrow the government in just the Nanjing region. Without a strong central authority, you end up with lots of strong local and regional authorities, and like magic you're back in the warring states era.  The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.
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Aug 25, 2023 19:13
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Toxic Mental posted:China with the extremely well-timed decision on something from 2011 japan has been storing the water for those 10 years and only yesterday started to release it into the ocean, since you can't hold like 500 million gallons or whatever the hell it was forever literally every legitimate authority says it's safe and the UN nuclear watchdogs go a step further and note that the background radiation in the ocean is no worse than what they're releasing but china doesn't let these sorts of things get in their way.
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Aug 25, 2023 19:33
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Korea's flipping their poo poo about it too but no one cares. Fondly remembering when maps were being passed around in Korea of how most of Japan was uninhabitable nuclear wasteland, and multiple Korean friends begging me to cancel a trip to Osaka because I was going to die from radiation.
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Aug 25, 2023 19:42
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Coolguye posted:japan has been storing the water for those 10 years and only yesterday started to release it into the ocean, since you can't hold like 500 million gallons or whatever the hell it was forever I mean radioactive water has been pumped into the ocean since 2011, and even before iirc. This is just some of the stored stuff, it's not really any different than the previous dozen years.
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Aug 25, 2023 19:48
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Grand Fromage posted:and multiple Korean friends begging me to cancel a trip to Osaka because I was going to die from radiation. Jokes on them you came back stronger.
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