(Thread IKs:
fart simpson)
|
Lol, all DPP top leaderships are scammers, they will not go near the independent declaration with a 5 inch stick.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 02:22 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 20:46 |
|
Bad news for China - Bankers’ 40% Pay Cuts Show the China Dream Fading in Its Richest Cities. Prestigious sectors like finance — where senior bankers report compensation cuts of as much as 40% — and technology are suffering. But even the typically stable government jobs that employ vast swathes of China’s middle class are not immune. Yet China’s limited room for debt-fueled stimulus gives Xi few easy solutions. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-12/pay-cuts-in-finance-tech-threaten-xi-s-campaign-to-revive-china-economy Bankers’ 40% Pay Cuts Show the China Dream Fading in Its Richest Cities By Bloomberg News September 13, 2023 at 7:30 AM GMT+8 For decades, China’s biggest cities have been home to one of the world’s greatest economic success stories: a nearly unbroken rise in living standards that lifted millions into the middle class. That trend is now coming to a halt, creating an under-the-radar threat to President Xi Jinping’s campaign to revive growth. Hiring salaries in Shanghai and Beijing dropped by 9% and 6% respectively in the second quarter from a year ago, Zhaopin Ltd. data compiled by Bloomberg show. It’s the biggest slump since at least 2015 and a stark contrast with government figures indicating wages rose nationwide. For many white-collar workers, the blow has been compounded by companies quietly slashing benefits including travel and meal allowances. Prestigious sectors like finance — where senior bankers report compensation cuts of as much as 40% — and technology are suffering. But even the typically stable government jobs that employ vast swathes of China’s middle class are not immune. The risk is a downward spiral that leaves workers cutting back further on spending even as Beijing tries to restore confidence. To escape the middle-income trap and keep a lid on social unrest, authorities must work out how to create better jobs for city dwellers. Yet China’s limited room for debt-fueled stimulus gives Xi few easy solutions. “Unless we see a steady growth in disposable income, I don’t think consumption’s going to improve in China anytime soon,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia Pacific economist at Natixis SA. “Everybody thinks Chinese consumers are not consuming because they feel there’s too much uncertainty, they don’t feel like it. Some people in China cannot consume.” Conversations with 18 people employed in the private sector and the government, most of whom declined to give their full names discussing sensitive matters, illustrate a growing unease over job security and personal spending. The pain in China’s labor market goes well beyond its record youth unemployment rate. Despite growing resentment, many urban workers of all ages are willing to accept steep pay cuts, fewer frills and longer working hours just to hang on to a job. Compensation Cuts Salaries are under pressure on multiple fronts. After three years of costly pandemic measures, many employers are struggling to deal with a slowdown that’s straining already tight budgets. For many more affluent businesses, the bigger challenge is Xi’s sweeping “common prosperity” campaign, aimed at reining in “the disorderly expansion of capital” in the private sector. Citic Securities Co., one of the country’s top investment banks, slashed some bankers’ basic salaries by up to 15%. Its rival China International Capital Corp. cut senior banker compensation, including bonuses, by more than 40%, Bloomberg News reported previously. CICC also instructed its bankers to fly coach and to book the cheapest “hard seats” on most trains. Eason, a business head at a commercial bank in Shanghai, is frustrated that his pay dropped 10% last year, despite double-digit growth at the institution and strong personal performance. “On the one hand, authorities encourage households to increase consumption, but on the other hand they call for pay cuts and limits,” he said. “It’s not easy for financial institutions to keep salaries stable,” he added. “Once you raise pay, you’ll most likely be summoned to authorities.” The consequences may reach much further than individual spending. One Hong Kong banker with mainland clients said that with fewer financial incentives and more emphasis on cutting risk, personal apathy is setting in and the financial industry is “lying flat.” Benefits are also being chipped away, in finance and beyond. Chinese corporates often boost compensation with cash payments nominally aimed at improving one facet of life or another. But even these are now deemed too luxurious. This year, Eason’s bank replaced its usual summertime hot-weather subsidy with cans of Coca-Cola and sun visors. A Shanghai-based consultant at a multinational firm said his daily meal allowance was slashed by nearly 80% to $27. Huang, a manager at a new media company in Hangzhou, said their firm had stopped paying for late-night taxi rides, ended overseas travel for team-building events and closed its second cafeteria. “The company was aiming big for a public listing before the pandemic,” said Huang. “Now, the consensus is just trying to seize possible opportunity to survive.” They added that the firm has cut headcount by a third over the past three years and may let go of more people in the future. Quiet Firings Employees in the so-called new economy are suffering too. In industries such as electric vehicles, batteries or solar and wind power, the average entry-level salary declined 3.6% to 13,755 yuan in June from a year ago, according to a private survey by Caixin Insight Group and Business Big Data Co. That’s the worst drop since at least 2015, despite double-digit growth in investments and exports. Wages declined again in August by 1.8% compared with a year earlier. The once free-wheeling technology sector is still grappling with the fallout of the common prosperity crackdown, which has wiped out billions in market value over the past two years. While policymakers signaled an end to the clampdown in July, the industry’s prospects remain uncertain. China’s giant tech sector cut tens of thousands of jobs in 2022 in an unprecedented wave of cost controls, and of those, the industry’s twin stars — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. — let go more than 20,000 employees alone. Many laid-off workers are willing to accept up to a 50% pay cut for a new position, according to Prima Yi, a tech headhunter with Shanghai Jinfang Management Consultancy. Meanwhile, firms have become more cautious about offering pay increases and promotions to woo new candidates, she said. Redundancies appear to be slowing, but quiet firings continue behind the scenes. One Shenzhen-based Tencent employee was asked to find a new job by her boss, who explained the human resources department would tell her next employer that she’d resigned. The strategy worked — when she took a new job with Alibaba in Beijing, she bagged a pay raise, although at 20% it was less than half the amount she’d come to expect as industry standard. Local Government Strain Even China’s “iron rice bowl” — jobs that typically guarantee a modest but stable paycheck for life — is showing cracks. The government is trimming a combination of bonuses, cash subsidies and base pay for many employees, according to interviews with 10 local civil servants. As a prison officer in a city in northern Guangdong province, Jason Wu has enjoyed annual pay rises for half a decade. But his bonus has been shrinking since 2021 without any official explanation, leaving his overall compensation 15% lower. After spending most of the pandemic barred from travel – even to attend his grandmother’s funeral – and socializing, he’s dismayed. Cuts like Jason’s are a sign of the strain on local governments as China’s property crisis deepens. Already weakened by pandemic-control costs, the massive drop in income from land sales has hit governments hard, and civil servants in poorer provinces are suffering most. In one heavily indebted northern province, an official said his overall pay had been cut by 35% while another reported his bonus had been close to zero for three years. Some government employees have been asked to return bonuses or cash subsidies going back as far as five years. For those without savings, repayment means a drastic drop in their monthly wages. Two officials in Chengdu and Shenzhen said they’ve been told to return payments designated for alleviating the impact of extreme climate events like flooding – in addition to coping with an overall drop in salary. Plunging Confidence Beijing has ramped up restrictions on sensitive or unflattering information about the nation’s faltering recovery as growth has slowed, making pay cuts increasingly hard to quantify. Liu Yuanchun, president of Shanghai University of Finance & Economics and a sometime adviser to the Politburo, is one of the few prominent Chinese economists to speak out on the issue of wages. “If we let the pay cuts become a trend, this will be very bad for the recovery of confidence and consumption,” he wrote in a May article. “We must not let the downward spiral of falling prices and income be formed.” But wage pressures are now spilling over into broader sentiment. While nationwide salaries rose after the pandemic, confidence in the job market and incomes plunged to new lows. For the past five quarters, the Income Confidence Index — a gauge measuring near-term income expectations — has indicated an expected contraction in future income, according to the central bank’s quarterly survey published in late June. It’s a record slump in a dataset that dates back to 2001. Some workers are considering moving out of big cities as a result. Tech worker Li worries that gender discrimination will make her job more precarious as she approaches age 35 and thinks about starting a family. A layoff would make her Beijing mortgage impossible to manage. So she and her husband may relocate to Xi’an, giving up access to better-quality healthcare and education in return for lower living costs. Continued urbanization is key to the economy’s transition into high-value services and production. If the promise of a better life in the big city loses its appeal, avoiding the middle-income trap only gets harder. China’s 10 biggest cities only account for about 12% of the country’s population. And a slowdown in inflation this year — prices rose by the least in over a decade during the January-August period — may lift the living standard of those who still experience wage growth. But the spending problem will be compounded if salary stagnation spreads beyond the middle-class jobs that dominate metropolises to further deepen deflationary pressures and the property slump. “If wage declines are happening for white-collar workers, that is quite a worrying sign with respect to the broader structural concern about economic rebalancing,” said Eli Friedman, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations who specializes in Chinese labor politics and urbanization. To increase domestic consumption, he added, “individuals and households need to have more money and more confidence about the future.” Older Workers Tougher working conditions and a slowing economy risk undermining the implicit social contract in China. For decades, millions of people have accepted limited personal freedoms in exchange for a better life. Now the opportunities — for a better job, more money and the chance to buy a home guaranteed to make you richer — appear to be fading. Under-25s are bearing the brunt of this shift. Official statistics in June showed more than one in five could not find a job, before China stopped publishing the numbers. But the data also point to tougher conditions for older workers in cities, who are hanging onto jobs for longer at a moment when they’re also expected to put in more hours. Since 2020, the official jobless rate in 31 major cities has exceeded the national average, but unemployment among staff aged 25 to 59 reached a record low of 4.1% in May and June. Meanwhile, average working hours have hovered close to 50 a week since April – the highest level since data began in 2018. “Older workers in big cities have become willing to accept lower wages and longer hours in order to save up and increase their sense of security,” said Gao Shanwen, chief economist at Essence Securities who has advised former premier Li Keqiang and various government agencies in the past. “This has squeezed out younger workers.” China doesn’t permit labor unions that are independent from the Communist Party or the government, leaving workers with few opportunities to bargain with employers. Downward Spiral Ensuring the labor market can provide enough jobs is one of the government’s top priorities, with various measures in place to drive growth, such as expanding recruitment by state-owned enterprises. But so far, authorities haven’t launched any significant efforts to boost wages. Household savings rose by 11.9 trillion yuan in the first eight months of this year – up 10% from a year earlier, official statistics show. That’s after savings soared 80% in 2022. In the US, the Biden administration turned to cash handouts to boost post-pandemic consumption and confidence. But China is unlikely to follow suit. While the government has made numerous modest policy announcements to support real estate and other sectors, Xi has previously lashed out at “welfarism” as an approach that encourages “lazy people.” For Jason Wu, it’s unclear if his paycheck will ever return to what he once considered the norm. “No one explained to us if those bonuses will still be paid, or when they may be paid,” said Wu. “But I don’t really need them to tell me. I just need to look at how bad the economy is.”
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 02:59 |
|
Josef bugman posted:Thank you very much. Also from what I've seen what would be the threads general read on Sun Yat-Sen? he seems pretty good to me. quote:It is my idea to make capitalism create socialism in China so that these two economic forces of human evolution will work side by side in future civilization. quote:If China stood on an equal basis with other nations, she could compete freely with them in the economic field and be able to hold her own without failure. But as soon as foreign nations use political power as a shield for their economic designs, then China is at a loss how to resist or to compete successfully with them. quote:The government should help and guide the weak and small racial groups within its national boundaries toward self-determination and self-government. It should offer resistance to foreign aggression, and simultaneously, it should revise foreign treaties in order to restore our equality and independence among the nations.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:17 |
|
Marzzle posted:(from t.me/DDGeopolitics/80905, via tgsa) this guy eatin' good from the garbage bin of ideology
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:19 |
|
Ytlaya posted:edit: And also the fact that any American who works in some tech-related field is fully aware of how many Chinese people there are with those skills, so they have to tell themselves that they're missing some "spark" that yea it's called a soul
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:21 |
|
fizzy posted:A Shanghai-based consultant at a multinational firm said his daily meal allowance was slashed by nearly 80% to $27. Huang, a manager at a new media company in Hangzhou, said their firm had stopped paying for late-night taxi rides, ended overseas travel for team-building events and closed its second cafeteria. Lol Good job president xi, keep it up
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:28 |
|
overseas travel for team building events
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:45 |
|
ModernMajorGeneral posted:Lol lol $135 per diem for meals in China was this guy eating at Michelin-level restaurants for every meal? a meal at a place like https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g308272-d8261321-Reviews-Epices_Foie_Gras-Shanghai.html is like 200-500 RMB corona familiar has issued a correction as of 04:01 on Sep 13, 2023 |
# ? Sep 13, 2023 03:57 |
|
i dunno doesnt seem very practical have they invented a version that lets you give out parking tickets or cause explosions
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 04:02 |
|
George Magnus: Yeah, I was going to say it's a sort of a fantasy, but I think people still entertain the idea that maybe things get kind of bad enough that the government will change its direction, change its trajectory. To me, this is like asking leopards to change their spots. I just don't think that's going to happen. So these people are basically Leninists and they focus very much on a kind of production, investment, supply orientation of the economy, from which they think that trickle-down benefits will raise the quality and standard of living of the population. They do not really believe in the kinds of things that we practice in varying degrees in liberal leaning democracies, of we think social welfare is fundamentally a kind of an okay idea. We have different kind of perceptions about how far it should go, but we actually think that social safety nets are a good thing. We think that public intervention in the economy to promote consumption and low taxes is a good thing, generally speaking. For Xi Jinping, this is all somewhat alien, to be honest. He, certainly now, if not in the beginning of his term of office, certainly believes, like we do, that national security is really important, or the government is really kind of obsessed, I think with stability and with controlling risks. They're not really interested in going for growth. They're not really interested in risk taking, certainly not the kind of what they would call egregious risk taking, which we think is part of the whole process of creative destruction, et cetera. And so this controlling repressive view about how to manage the economy, which is built on a faltering model, if you see what I mean. I think this is almost like a bit of a doom loop actually. ??????
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 04:46 |
|
fizzy posted:Bad news for China - Under Xi Jinping's hardline approach, China is faced with a real estate crisis, record high youth unemployment, and massive debts at the local government level tyvm
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 05:15 |
|
tatankatonk posted:George Magnus: Yeah, I was going to say it's a sort of a fantasy, but I think people still entertain the idea that maybe things get kind of bad enough that the government will change its direction, change its trajectory. To me, this is like asking leopards to change their spots. I just don't think that's going to happen. So these people are basically Leninists and they focus very much on a kind of production, investment, supply orientation of the economy, from which they think that trickle-down benefits will raise the quality and standard of living of the population. They do not really believe in the kinds of things that we practice in varying degrees in liberal leaning democracies, of we think social welfare is fundamentally a kind of an okay idea. We have different kind of perceptions about how far it should go, but we actually think that social safety nets are a good thing. We think that public intervention in the economy to promote consumption and low taxes is a good thing, generally speaking. For Xi Jinping, this is all somewhat alien, to be honest. He, certainly now, if not in the beginning of his term of office, certainly believes, like we do, that national security is really important, or the government is really kind of obsessed, I think with stability and with controlling risks. They're not really interested in going for growth. They're not really interested in risk taking, certainly not the kind of what they would call egregious risk taking, which we think is part of the whole process of creative destruction, et cetera. And so this controlling repressive view about how to manage the economy, which is built on a faltering model, if you see what I mean. I think this is almost like a bit of a doom loop actually. lmao
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 05:37 |
|
tatankatonk posted:George Magnus: Yeah, I was going to say it's a sort of a fantasy, but I think people still entertain the idea that maybe things get kind of bad enough that the government will change its direction, change its trajectory. To me, this is like asking leopards to change their spots. I just don't think that's going to happen. So these people are basically Leninists and they focus very much on a kind of production, investment, supply orientation of the economy, from which they think that trickle-down benefits will raise the quality and standard of living of the population. They do not really believe in the kinds of things that we practice in varying degrees in liberal leaning democracies, of we think social welfare is fundamentally a kind of an okay idea. We have different kind of perceptions about how far it should go, but we actually think that social safety nets are a good thing. We think that public intervention in the economy to promote consumption and low taxes is a good thing, generally speaking. For Xi Jinping, this is all somewhat alien, to be honest. He, certainly now, if not in the beginning of his term of office, certainly believes, like we do, that national security is really important, or the government is really kind of obsessed, I think with stability and with controlling risks. They're not really interested in going for growth. They're not really interested in risk taking, certainly not the kind of what they would call egregious risk taking, which we think is part of the whole process of creative destruction, et cetera. And so this controlling repressive view about how to manage the economy, which is built on a faltering model, if you see what I mean. I think this is almost like a bit of a doom loop actually. china doesn't just rush into doing extremely dumb poo poo and this is bad, actually
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 06:10 |
|
growth doesn’t mean building stuff and lifting people out of poverty you know.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 06:31 |
tatankatonk posted:George Magnus: Yeah, I was going to say it's a sort of a fantasy, but I think people still entertain the idea that maybe things get kind of bad enough that the government will change its direction, change its trajectory. To me, this is like asking leopards to change their spots. I just don't think that's going to happen. So these people are basically Leninists and they focus very much on a kind of production, investment, supply orientation of the economy, from which they think that trickle-down benefits will raise the quality and standard of living of the population. They do not really believe in the kinds of things that we practice in varying degrees in liberal leaning democracies, of we think social welfare is fundamentally a kind of an okay idea. We have different kind of perceptions about how far it should go, but we actually think that social safety nets are a good thing. We think that public intervention in the economy to promote consumption and low taxes is a good thing, generally speaking. For Xi Jinping, this is all somewhat alien, to be honest. He, certainly now, if not in the beginning of his term of office, certainly believes, like we do, that national security is really important, or the government is really kind of obsessed, I think with stability and with controlling risks. They're not really interested in going for growth. They're not really interested in risk taking, certainly not the kind of what they would call egregious risk taking, which we think is part of the whole process of creative destruction, et cetera. And so this controlling repressive view about how to manage the economy, which is built on a faltering model, if you see what I mean. I think this is almost like a bit of a doom loop actually. The people running poo poo are failsons of failsons who don't actually know or understand jack about poo poo and just repeat the nonsense they've absorbed through osmosis like a religious catechism yes
|
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 06:38 |
|
yellowcar posted:true innovation is having a dozen different food delivery apps Hell yeah https://ltl-beijing.com/order-food-in-china/
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 07:07 |
|
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 07:08 |
|
Tankbuster posted:I am watching the show that gave us the current thread title and it seems pretty pro capitalism to me. preposterous how could chinese television possibly air a pro capitalism television show everyone knows they censor all the freethinkers
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 07:43 |
|
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1701471397615161688
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 08:03 |
|
china is clearly engaging in unprovoked aggression by existing close to so many us military bases
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 08:04 |
|
There should be some U.S. military bases on the mainland or at least Hainan to fully encircle and contain Nationalist Chinese aggression
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 08:39 |
|
Bad news for China's attempt to challenge US air superiority in the Pacific - China's newest aircraft carrier still trails the USA's nuclear-powered warships - Compared with the US Navy’s advanced carriers, which use nuclear propulsion systems, the conventionally powered Fujian will still be slow and have limited range. - defence experts said the Fujian would not be able to play a real battle role any time soon. - But Chinese and foreign observers believe the PLA needs significantly more time to “learn” carrier operations that the US military has been conducting for decades. According to Japanese military officials, the Liaoning and the Shandong manage only about 20 fighter sorties a day on average, less than one-seventh of the rate the Gerald Ford has achieved. - Yet it remains unclear when China will be able to deploy large carrier battle groups including submarines and build a nuclear-powered carrier. - Asked on Monday what would change when the Fujian enters service, Admiral Richard Chen, a former commander of Taiwan’s Navy, said the carrier would make “no difference” to the PLA’s real naval capabilities. - “Their qualified naval aviators are not enough,” he said. “Of course [the PLA Navy is] showing their muscle, but their capacity is still far behind that of the US.”[/b] China’s newest aircraft carrier prepares to take to the seas Kathrin Hille in Taipei 7 HOURS AGO Smoke rising from the chimney of a huge warship moored at Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai this month was the clearest sign yet that the Fujian, China’s newest aircraft carrier, was getting ready to sail. After sheds on the warship’s deck were dismantled over the past few months, “it has started testing its propulsion system”, said Hsu Yen-chi, a researcher at the Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies think-tank in Taipei. The ship, China’s third aircraft carrier and the first designed domestically, marks a leap in Beijing’s pursuit of projecting armed force far beyond its shores — part of leader Xi Jinping’s goal of making the People’s Liberation Army a “world-class military” by the middle of the century. Foreign defence officials and analysts said the Fujian’s test runs and entry into service would offer clues as to how quickly China can catch up with the US amid intensifying competition and Beijing’s growing military pressure on Taiwan. Hsu said the Fujian’s mission would be to offset the air superiority of the US and its allies in the western Pacific and east Asia and equip the PLA with greater operational freedom. “Because the Fujian uses many new technologies that the PLA has not utilised before, the testing time will definitely be longer than that of the previous carrier,” he said. “However, I think she will start sea trials before the end of this year.” Over the past two years, the PLA Navy has begun sending the two aircraft carriers it already has in service on training missions outside the first island chain, which runs from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines, and much closer to Guam, home to several large US military bases. But the small size and outdated design of the Liaoning and the Shandong limit the scale and scope of their operations. Compared with the US Navy’s advanced carriers, which use nuclear propulsion systems, the conventionally powered Fujian will still be slow and have limited range. But in other respects, it demonstrates a substantial evolution from China’s earlier carriers. The Fujian is built to launch fighter jets with an electromagnetic catapult, a system on a par with the USS Gerald Ford, the US Navy’s most advanced carrier in service. By contrast, the Liaoning, China’s first carrier built from a Ukrainian-made hull acquired in 1999, and the Shandong, a copy of that ship manufactured in China, use older ski-jump ramps. Moreover, the Fujian is the first PLA carrier that can carry a complete fleet of aircraft, including patrol aircraft and early warning and control planes. “The experience of managing such a mixed fleet cannot be learned from the previous two carriers, and managing and dispatching carrier-based aircraft is the key to the combat effectiveness of an aircraft carrier,” Hsu said. None of that is likely to start until next year at the earliest. Sea trials of the Liaoning and the Shandong took more than a year before they began operations with China’s carrier-borne J-15 fighters in earnest. “This phase is bound to drag out longer for the Fujian as the crew needs to familiarise itself with an entirely new set of equipment, procedures and even dimensions,” said a senior military official of a neighbouring country. Even then, defence experts said the Fujian would not be able to play a real battle role any time soon. “The first two carriers were really experimental platforms,” said Alexander Neill, an expert on the Chinese military at the Pacific Forum. “The Liaoning helped the Chinese navy get into aircraft carrier operating mode for the first time — working up a cadre of operators, generating a group of officers familiar with the issues. The Shandong was an experiment in gearing up the shipbuilding industry to supply the PLA Navy with these kinds of ships. “Now, once they have the Fujian in service, they will be experimenting with carrier operations at scale and at pace.” The Chinese navy’s learning curve has been steep. The Liaoning did not conduct its first training mission with aircraft outside the first island chain until 2021, almost nine years after it entered service. The Shandong shortened that period to a little more than two years. In more regular large-scale exercises since April 2021, the two warships have increased their range and operating pace. The Japanese military counted about 300 sorties during two Liaoning exercises in the western Pacific in December 2021 and May 2022. That figure increased to more than 600 such sorties during a similar drill by the Shandong in April this year. While PLA Navy aviators practised take-off and landing on the Liaoning just over 700 nautical miles off the Chinese coast in May last year, the carrier pushed that range to 1,300 nautical miles during its most recent western Pacific drill in December — a distance at which analysts said the jets would have had no option to refuel on land. These were truly “blue water operations”, wrote Mike Dahm, a former US naval intelligence officer and now an analyst at the Mitre Corporation think-tank, which conducts defence research for the US government, in a paper published in January. “China’s navy is evolving at an astonishing rate,” he added. On Monday, the Shandong passed through the Bashi Channel south of Taiwan en route to China’s largest-ever training exercises involving an aircraft carrier in the western Pacific. But Chinese and foreign observers believe the PLA needs significantly more time to “learn” carrier operations that the US military has been conducting for decades. According to Japanese military officials, the Liaoning and the Shandong manage only about 20 fighter sorties a day on average, less than one-seventh of the rate the Gerald Ford has achieved. The larger Fujian, with its advanced launch system, is expected to help the PLA Navy master those tasks. Yet it remains unclear when China will be able to deploy large carrier battle groups including submarines and build a nuclear-powered carrier. “Those are the next goalposts, but they would be a major leap,” said Neill. He added Beijing might aim for a prototype for a nuclear-powered carrier by 2040, when Australia starts receiving nuclear-powered submarines under its Aukus deal with the US and UK. Asked on Monday what would change when the Fujian enters service, Admiral Richard Chen, a former commander of Taiwan’s Navy, said the carrier would make “no difference” to the PLA’s real naval capabilities. “Their qualified naval aviators are not enough,” he said. “Of course [the PLA Navy is] showing their muscle, but their capacity is still far behind that of the US.”
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 08:51 |
|
Do people read the China doom articles (read the full article, not just the title) have any long term memories? Do they not remember the rush of articles declaring China couldn't get out of the Covid lockdown about 1 year ago? Like this is just the one batch, not even the last batch. He should include the F35 operation range in the map, because it's just large enough to fly from Okinawa to Taiwan and back. Also draw out the 30 much closer Chinese airports next to Taiwan.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:04 |
|
Look if China didn't want any trouble they shouldn't have placed their bodies of water so close to American bases
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:10 |
|
fizzy posted:[“Their qualified naval aviators are not enough,” he said. “Of course [the PLA Navy is] showing their muscle, but their capacity is still far behind that of the US.” oh remember the time the US won in vietnam when they parked every single carrier unopposed of the coast
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:11 |
|
Palladium posted:oh remember the time the US won in vietnam when they parked every single carrier unopposed of the coast
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:22 |
|
You laugh now but once we burn enough hydrocarbons to make Waterworld a reality those carriers won't seem so useless
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:25 |
|
https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1701864523513090495?t=4yaX_ReNDl5BbOrDOS-4Gw&s=19
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 10:27 |
|
Bad news for China - China's growth is buried under great wall of debt https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/chinas-growth-is-buried-under-great-wall-debt-2023-09-13/ China’s growth is buried under great wall of debt By Yawen Chen September 13, 20239:27 AM GMT+8 Updated 39 min ago LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Where is Wen Jiabao when you need him? China’s former premier is remembered for his decision to unleash a huge state spending plan after the 2008 financial crisis. Today’s leaders wish they could deploy similar fiscal firepower to kickstart their sputtering economy. The options before President Xi Jinping aren’t great. Yet letting some heavily indebted local governments’ investment arms fail would be better than keeping them on pricey life support or counting on an elusive rebound in consumption. Wen exited the political stage a decade ago but his legacy lives on, for better and, mostly, for worse. His plan to throw 4 trillion yuan ($555 billion), or about 13% of China’s GDP in 2008, at everything from railroads to airports contributed to a debt overhang that’s still haunting Beijing today. In the 15 years since, China’s debt-to-GDP ratio has doubled to a whopping 280%, with the bulk of liabilities held by local government financial vehicles (LGFVs). Most of these 3,000-plus entities were created by local governments during the 2008 crisis to skirt a central government ban on direct state borrowing. They were then contracted by regional governments to build public infrastructure, from uneconomical leisure parks and roads to slightly more cost-effective highways, subway stations and high-speed bullet trains. Many also developed land for regional governments before it was sold on to residential developers. Today those vehicles are a ticking time bomb that hampers China’s ability to spend its way out of the current economic doldrums. Economists are busy downgrading the country’s full-year growth to below the official goal of around 5%, which was already seen as modest, because an initial recovery following December’s pandemic reopening quickly faded. China is flirting with deflation as the property sector - which accounts for a quarter of GDP – has sunk and pandemic-scarred consumers and businesses hesitate to spend. Xi’s dilemmas are compounded by his belief that the traditional stimulus playbook of boosting real estate has run its course. He has frowned at house prices that made Shanghai less affordable than New York and made an example of over-leveraged developers that disrupted the market, such as China Evergrande (3333.HK), which is struggling to restructure some $300 billion in liabilities. He has eased home purchase curbs recently to stabilise property sales, but they are still on course to decline around 10% this year, per Gavekal Dragonomics. That leaves much of the heavy lifting to fiscal spending. Yet LGFVs’ debt stands in the way. These vehicles had already accumulated 80 trillion yuan of liabilities at the end of 2022, according to analysts at Guosheng Securities. Of that, 54 trillion yuan was interest-bearing, mostly owed to Chinese banks. The bulk of these debts are separated from local governments’ balance sheets, but Beijing's decade-long efforts to sever the implicit guarantee between local governments and their LGFVs have been largely unsuccessful. A third of LGFVs didn’t generate positive cash flow last year, according to Guosheng. And 60% of them, holding about 32 trillion yuan of outstanding debt, would struggle to pay interest with their own EBITDA, Citi analysts estimated. Yet local officials remain reluctant to let them default on public markets, for fear that such a shock would shut their regions’ funding access and even trigger a run on government bonds. Beijing wants to buy time. Its latest move includes a mooted plan to allow local governments to raise 1 trillion yuan in total through bond sales to repay LGFV debt. The Ministry of Finance may also ask banks to extend loans and slash the interest. Zunyi Road and Bridge Construction, a LGFV in China's Southwestern Guizhou province, set a precedent earlier this year, as its creditor banks agreed to roll over its loans for 20 years and halved interest on them. Xi could also help by letting local governments shuffle their debt into the state’s balance sheet since the central government has a debt-to-GDP ratio of just 20%. The problem with these measures is that they wouldn’t reduce LGFVs’ pile of debt. A harsher medicine is needed. The shock therapy option for Beijing is to force a fire sale to raise much-needed cash. LGFVs have 133 trillion yuan in total assets, around 60% of which are in land and physical assets such as industrial parks, transport infrastructure and investment properties, according to Guosheng. Local officials have pushed back at Beijing's requests to sell, arguing most of these assets are illiquid, according to the Financial Times. But even if the portfolio of land and fixed assets was put up for sale at a massive 80% discount to entice vulture and bad debt investors, that would raise around 16 trillion yuan, enabling the LGFVs to pay back all their outstanding bonds. At a more optimistic 30% discount, the proceeds would jump to 55 trillion yuan, which would cover all outstanding interest-bearing debt. Even with asset sales, it's inevitable that some LGFVs, especially in poorer regions, will have to fail. Beijing fears that would break the banks. S&P analysts calculate that about 20 trillion yuan of LGFVs’ loans may be at risk of restructuring. Letting these loans roll over with interest slashed - as in Zunyi's case - would result in a 5 trillion yuan hit to bank capital, and reduce banks' average capital adequacy ratio by 2.6 percentage points to 12.6%; that's still within regulatory requirements. The stakes are high. Despite Xi's distaste for propping up the economy through real estate, the danger is that a fire sale of LGFVs’ assets could spark a widespread fall in the value of collateral for bank loans and cause a deeper crisis of confidence. That, in turn, might deal a considerable blow to lenders’ balance sheets and destabilise the financial system. That said, the banking sector is sitting on 335 trillion yuan of total assets, and bad loans, impairments and provisions will only be an issue once lenders come clean on them. So far, they are not. As of June 2023, Chinese commercial banks claimed that non-performing loans were just 1.6% of all loans. Investors have already priced in more damage and pushed the average valuation of those listed to less than half of book value. The makeup of China’s growth makes drastic action on LGFVs even more imperative. Unlike in the United States and other Western countries, China’s growth is still driven by investment rather than consumption. Investment as a share of GDP is a lofty 40%, according to Oxford Economics, double that of the United States. Chinese households have ample savings, having accumulated 17.8 trillion yuan of bank deposits last year alone. But darkening job prospects, a diminishing wealth effect from real estate, and scars from years of pandemic lockdowns have made them extremely reluctant to spend them. If Xi won't boost property wholeheartedly and is not able to count on consumers, his efforts to revive China’s growth have to focus on smashing the great wall of local debt.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 11:01 |
|
bloomberg, wallstreetjournal, reuters operation mockingbird working overtime
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 11:51 |
|
fizzy posted:Bad news for China - China's growth is buried under great wall of debt
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 12:17 |
|
Fizzy is expanding his news franchise to the Eurasian thread and he is going to push out Someguy TT.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 12:34 |
|
fizzy owns and is literally my #1 news provider
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 13:30 |
|
not sure i like this gimmick here, but ok
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 14:08 |
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Fizzy is expanding his news franchise to the Eurasian thread and he is going to push out Someguy TT. Finally., some good news for the Eurasian thread.
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 14:09 |
|
The great wall of debt sounds like a ramirez comic
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 14:17 |
|
fizzy are you banned from d&d or just the Ukraine threads?
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 14:19 |
|
banned 4 truth
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 14:48 |
|
someone tell comrade xi to fix gacha monetizationquote:In May 2021, miHoYo established the Communist Youth League Committee under Shanghai miHoYo Network Technology Co., Ltd. The committee aims to integrate youth into company development and partake in the innovation and publicization of traditional Chinese culture. The committee created comics and travel maps with the help of Genshin Impact material to promote Xuhui District cultural tourism landmarks. The character Paimon was formally named "Xuhui Youth Culture Star Promoter."[79][80]
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 15:12 |
|
|
# ? May 27, 2024 20:46 |
|
mila kunis posted:someone tell comrade xi to fix gacha monetization afaik he already did to some extent... ... in china. gacha exports are still as predatory as ever to make china grow larger lmfao
|
# ? Sep 13, 2023 15:20 |