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BrigadierSensible posted:Entirely unrelated to the current discussion. But Singapore was mentioned, so it made me think of this. In Taiwan the la is pretty common as well. Usually means 
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Dec 11, 2023 06:09
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The Taiwanese I know mostly say a not la, and even when they do say la it's a vastly different one to the singaporean lah.
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Dec 11, 2023 07:53
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The ghost town phenomenon is more of a symptom of issues rather than the problem itself. Local governments get tax revenue from land sales so they'd push for new housing development, the economy itself derives a large portion of its growth from new development so it is easy to imagine the central government greasing the wheels, and the individual saw real estate as a safe place to invest so those who could invested in housing. The entirety is an ecosystem of sorts that supports everyone within it. And for years with a growing population it all worked out with a few bad bets along the way. When that ecosystem hit a combination of slowing population growth, overzealous expansion, and the practice of individuals/investors taking on mortgages before construction, the result is massive loss from construction giants and their lenders down to the most modest individual investor taking it on the chin. The central government can either support the ailing sector as they have done in the past or let the bets come due and allow the system to naturally weed out the bad loans and poor development decisions. The government wields essentially unlimited power so they may be able to pull the strings in such a way to serve up a soft landing but a lot of money in the form of massive unfinished or unwanted construction is going to go poof.
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Dec 11, 2023 16:48
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Big rear end On Fire posted:The ghost town phenomenon is more of a symptom of issues rather than the problem itself. Local governments get tax revenue from land sales so they'd push for new housing development, the economy itself derives a large portion of its growth from new development so it is easy to imagine the central government greasing the wheels, and the individual saw real estate as a safe place to invest so those who could invested in housing. The entirety is an ecosystem of sorts that supports everyone within it. And for years with a growing population it all worked out with a few bad bets along the way. The bright/dark side of this is that since China gets to pick to winners and losers, foreign investors get to eat 100% losses and then domestic investment firms eat more losses than individual investors. Sort of a middle ground between the American model of bailing out the big firms, and the Icelandic model of bailing out the little guys.
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Dec 11, 2023 18:24
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eSports Chaebol posted:The bright/dark side of this is that since China gets to pick to winners and losers, foreign investors get to eat 100% losses and then domestic investment firms eat more losses than individual investors. That'd be nice if there were lots of foreign investors to soak, but there aren't. This is almost all internal debt. Also, while "make the foreigners eat all the losses" sounds great in theory, it isn't great when your economy still mostly runs on selling stuff to foreigners. So yes because it's money that China owes to China, they have a lot of power to distribute the losses. But while they could distribute the losses away from the individual home investors, that means you are soaking the insiders and wealthy connected bigwigs. A good number of whom are gonna be party members with connections in Xi's own camp. Hmmm. Maybe tougher than it sounds. So I predict they will imprison a few CEOs of real estate companies for show, let all the middle class investors lose their shirts, then deal with the massive public discontent with either crackdowns or god forbid invading Taiwan.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:31
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It will be interesting/terrifying to see if China can actually just not have an economic meltdown through the sheer force of the government saying nope we're not going to do that. I assume that's not possible but who knows.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:39
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i mean internal losses like that don't necessarily matter if the government is willing to exercise its financial sovereignty on the matter. china, along with any other highly independent country (financially), has shitloads of tools for handling and stabilizing those situations. especially in the case of distressed businesses, the government can just wave their hands and say "ok, now you have enough money to pay your debts", and it will just happen. naturally though, none of those sorts of tools are infinitely powerful, and china has already been using those tools very heavily for the last 20 years to sustain and bluff growth. inflation rates are basically the ultimate canary in the mineshaft for those bluffs being called, and china's having to hold back right now precisely because they're on the edge of those rates going out of control. if they go out of control now, they'll really have to sweat to stop it. Grand Fromage posted:It will be interesting/terrifying to see if China can actually just not have an economic meltdown through the sheer force of the government saying nope we're not going to do that. I assume that's not possible but who knows. it's extremely possible, just not unlimited. that's exactly what the US government did in 2008, and continued to do for like 10 years afterward. the fed was basically like "nope not gonna do the meltdown today" until eventually the market stopped asking. the issue with china is that they've already been saying "nope not gonna do that today" for decades to lie about their growth in the first place so their ability to say no is already sorely tested.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:41
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Coolguye posted:
When you look back decades, china went from a backwater to building everything for the world. Getting sweaty about them lying over 10% vs 8% annualized growth is missing the forest for the trees.
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Dec 11, 2023 20:58
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Baddog posted:When you look back decades, china went from a backwater to building everything for the world. Getting sweaty about them lying over 10% vs 8% annualized growth is missing the forest for the trees. if it was 10% vs 8% you'd be correct. but it's 10% vs what is most likely closer to 2-4% in many of these years. that was the entire point that a lot of economists spent the entirety of 200X shouting themselves blue over and nobody believed them. institutional lying was so ingrained in china that their numbers were basically made up from whole cloth, so if you focused on the only thing you COULD reasonably measure - cost and value of exports - it was overwhelmingly likely that the numbers out of china weren't just incorrect, they were wrong on close to an order of magnitude level. and again - if this happened 2, 4, even 6 years in a row, even then it might not be that bad. these are still percentage points. but it was going on for decades before bluffs finally started getting called. it's worth noting that when we say decades at this point, we do mean 200X. if you want to go back to 198X okay that's another question, absolutely there was a massive industrialization shift there and massive growth should be expected. but the five year plan doesn't last 40 years.
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Dec 11, 2023 21:06
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You're not wrong, but when you're borrowing money to invest in China at 9%...
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Dec 11, 2023 21:07
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USA has the luxury to hand wave any thing and nope the gently caress out. By virtue of being the reserved back currency of the world, and having the largest military, USA can print however much money they want and be the first ones to spend it before everyone else in the world. Oh and they are also the chair and run the IMF, Swift, other financial laws and tools for worldwide payment systems. Master card/visa sitting on their asses collecting those 2-3% merchant fees. Basically the rest of the world is subsidizing the American economy. Besides, if the states can hand wave over god knows number of lost lives and wars, hand waving economic meltdowns is easy - as long as the reserved currency is USD and you have swathe loads of immigrants clamoring in. So how is this related to the other country? The other country wants that power and privilege to dictate the rules of the world. And in some ways is learning from the States to enable wealth extraction. Service economy my rear end when everything is outsourced and you live off weird financial instruments and rentier crap.
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Dec 11, 2023 21:18
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🙄
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Dec 11, 2023 21:20
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in fact china has the largest military
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Dec 11, 2023 21:41
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i hear it’s the largest most effective non-woke fighting force in the world these days
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Dec 11, 2023 22:13
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Speaking of institutional lying, how's that record youth unemployment going, China? Problem solved, I guess.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:14
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27.5% turnout for HK elections, I guess why bother when the choices are already made anyway.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:19
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Wonton posted:USA has the luxury to hand wave any thing and nope the gently caress out. By virtue of being the reserved back currency of the world, and having the largest military, USA can print however much money they want and be the first ones to spend it before everyone else in the world. Oh and they are also the chair and run the IMF, Swift, other financial laws and tools for worldwide payment systems. Master card/visa sitting on their asses collecting those 2-3% merchant fees. 🙄
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Dec 11, 2023 22:20
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Wonton posted:USA has the luxury to hand wave any thing and nope the gently caress out. By virtue of being the reserved back currency of the world, and having the largest military, USA can print however much money they want and be the first ones to spend it before everyone else in the world. Oh and they are also the chair and run the IMF, Swift, other financial laws and tools for worldwide payment systems. Master card/visa sitting on their asses collecting those 2-3% merchant fees. been saying this!!!
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Dec 11, 2023 22:23
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Wonton posted:USA has the luxury to hand wave any thing and nope the gently caress out. By virtue of being the reserved back currency of the world, and having the largest military, USA can print however much money they want and be the first ones to spend it before everyone else in the world. Oh and they are also the chair and run the IMF, Swift, other financial laws and tools for worldwide payment systems. Master card/visa sitting on their asses collecting those 2-3% merchant fees. Many such cases!
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Dec 11, 2023 22:31
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Wonton posted:USA has the luxury to hand wave any thing and nope the gently caress out. By virtue of being the reserved back currency of the world, and having the largest military, USA can print however much money they want and be the first ones to spend it before everyone else in the world. Oh and they are also the chair and run the IMF, Swift, other financial laws and tools for worldwide payment systems. Master card/visa sitting on their asses collecting those 2-3% merchant fees. 
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Dec 11, 2023 22:32
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been a while since this thread had a good Xi Jinping THOT
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Dec 11, 2023 22:59
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The US is the reason that china sucks loving rear end! lol!
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Dec 11, 2023 23:11
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The USA has been the bad guy in most ways historically.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:11
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People are so happy they don't even feel the need to go out and vote!
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Dec 11, 2023 23:40
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Mr. Nice! posted:The USA has been the bad guy in most ways historically. It's more like X-Men, there's not just one The Bad Guy The USA is Blob, China is Mister Sinister, etc
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Dec 12, 2023 00:25
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McGavin posted:Speaking of institutional lying, how's that record youth unemployment going, China? The youth employment crisis is interesting, because it's basically a result of China trying to bootstrap it's way to a western service economy with education - look if everyone goes and does a degree the jobs those degrees require will appear right? And to a certain extent they did, but when Xi came in and said "actually, kids doing nothing but online tutoring or online gambling in gacha games is bad, shutting it all down", this model of employment disappeared. It might be better for China overall, but it's bad for Number, and providing the type of jobs many of those youth want and have been training for.
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Dec 12, 2023 02:39
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Nothingtoseehere posted:The youth employment crisis is interesting, because it's basically a result of China trying to bootstrap it's way to a western service economy with education - look if everyone goes and does a degree the jobs those degrees require will appear right? you MIGHT be able to make an argument that self-sufficiency is good, actually, if that sort of autarky hadn't led to objectively more misery and poverty in literally every case it was pursued in the last 3 centuries. countries become more self-sufficient by joining larger trading networks and reinvesting their winnings from comparative advantage into home infrastructure and contingencies for if that trade goes south. this is a known good pathway that has led large places like India and small places like Botswana alike to objectively better spots with at least some measure of home grown durability. that's basically the exact opposite of what China has been doing since Xi took power, though.
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Dec 12, 2023 02:51
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Coolguye posted:there's no way to spin having such massive unemployment as ultimately good. if there's one repeated lesson from the last 100 years of economic activity it's that as long as a job generates something someone else will pay money for, there's no such thing as frivolous employment. 100 years ago US government officials were whining that manufacturing was distracting from the important business of agriculture, 40 years ago they were whining that these newfangled "service" jobs were distracting from the important business of manufacturing. both times they were completely wrong. I don't disagree, but also industries do have negative externalities to consider. I don't think Chinese lives were made better by constant tutoring outside of school by private companies, or but addicting children to gacha games. The issue is more among that China just decided to destroy a industry overnight, and create and chilling effect on other services.
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Dec 12, 2023 03:09
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Mr. Nice! posted:The USA has been the bad guy in most ways historically. No, you are confusing it with Billie Ellish. She even wrote a song about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDfgMOUjCI
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Dec 12, 2023 03:29
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Nothingtoseehere posted:The youth employment crisis is interesting, because it's basically a result of China trying to bootstrap it's way to a western service economy with education - look if everyone goes and does a degree the jobs those degrees require will appear right? So China doesn't really hold the same reverence of the trades as the US does. From what I understand, it's like if the German two track education system were completely honest its class structure. I remember working in a bilingual school in the boonies of Beijing, near the Hebei border, where students were sent there because they got kicked out of most of the schools they attended (and it's hard to get kicked out of private schools in China!). It was essentially an American title I with money. Most kids there are just burning time until they inherit their parent's business or until they get a trade, supposedly. Pretty typical of China really to implement an order from above and not really worry about providing an alternative
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Dec 12, 2023 15:26
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A Chinese influencer was arrested in Thailand and forced to apologize for hurting the feelings of the Thai people after posting a video of the area around Nana Plaza and claiming it was unsafe
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Dec 14, 2023 00:23
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Atlas Hugged posted:A Chinese influencer was arrested in Thailand and forced to apologize for hurting the feelings of the Thai people after posting a video of the area around Nana Plaza and claiming it was unsafe 
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Dec 14, 2023 00:58
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Mr. Nice! posted:The USA has been the bad guy in most ways historically. This if course means discussing or most importantly, criticizing any other nations means we ultimately need to pivot to discussing the US. Because, obviously, we're the center of the world, and it should always be about us. No one else's decisions matter or have weight. Other countries? HAH. Not on my watch. It is only the US in the entire world and, nothing else happens. So obviously, we should only ever focus on the US, in any and every discussion.
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Dec 14, 2023 01:46
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Everyone should criticize the govt always. Every government. Even if it it a communist govt that is 'for the people'. Frankly, the people should be involved and criticizing especially if it a govt for the to people, that's the process of active governance!
StrangersInTheNight fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Dec 14, 2023 |
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Dec 14, 2023 01:56
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StrangersInTheNight posted:Everyone should criticize the govt always. Every government. Even if it it a communist govt that is 'for the people'. Frankly, the people should be involved and criticizing especially if it a govt for the to people, that's the process of active governance! sounds like counterrevolutionary activity to me
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Dec 14, 2023 02:00
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StrangersInTheNight posted:Because, obviously, we're the center of the world Talk about a phrase that will hurt feelings
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Dec 14, 2023 02:03
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Atlas Hugged posted:A Chinese influencer was arrested in Thailand and forced to apologize for hurting the feelings of the Thai people after posting a video of the area around Nana Plaza and claiming it was unsafe Too many "ladies of the night" making propositions?
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Dec 14, 2023 02:20
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StrangersInTheNight posted:This if course means discussing or most importantly, criticizing any other nations means we ultimately need to pivot to discussing the US. Because, obviously, we're the center of the world, and it should always be about us. No one else's decisions matter or have weight. Other countries? HAH. Not on my watch. I've become somewhat dissolutioned with Modern Western Leftism when I realized that it was more important to them to be Anti American that it was to actually pursue and practice leftist tenets
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Dec 14, 2023 02:34
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Okuteru posted:I've become somewhat dissolutioned with Modern Western Leftism when I realized that it was more important to them to be Anti American that it was to actually pursue and practice leftist tenets  There's lots to hate about America, but other countries shouldn't get a free pass just because their flag is red.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:38
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Okuteru posted:I've become somewhat dissolutioned with Modern Western Leftism when I realized that it was more important to them to be Anti American that it was to actually pursue and practice leftist tenets
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Dec 14, 2023 02:39
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