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Just to be clear, there is no real chance of political liberalization regardless of what happens, right? Like the scenario required for the Chinese government to actually change here would be basically apocalyptic, correct?
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May 11, 2014 06:16
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Femur posted:Is there any credibility to this "Rice Theory" or is it just racism? It greatly magnifies cultural differences then comes up with a  explanation for it with no real supporting evidence beyond 'it sounds logical', all to make conservative investor types feel tingly about how freedom loving and individualistic they are.So I don't know if it's racist or not, but it's certainly idiotic yes.
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May 11, 2014 13:29
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So just how fundamental to China's economy is corruption? My impression so far is that local party politicians have their fingers in the economy down to the very basic level, and interfere freely, if not extremely heavily, in order to enrich themselves and curry political favor. Assuming that's the case, the question is then whether this is sustainable in the sense that it can coexist with healthy economic growth? Or is it slowly veering China's economy off track with perverse incentives to the point where growth will slow down and stop? Is this one of those questions where nobody really knows the answer and we'll just have to wait and see? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jun 4, 2014 |
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Jun 4, 2014 02:44
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dr_rat posted:Even better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_%28water_transport%29 The problem of making canals go uphill was solved thousands of years ago
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Jun 30, 2014 17:55
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Raenir Salazar posted:Figuring out how to cope with the fact that you are one ultimately expendable person out of seven billion is going to be the psychological challenge of the 21 century; I can entirely see how anyone could one day just stop and realize how small they are, like they are in some kind of Lovecraft story and go insane from the realization. Similar to those people who, despite flying planes just fine regularly will suddenly one day have a freak out and lock themselves in the bathroom. Industrial society and modernism have been around for a bit, I don't think this is ascribable to that when it doesn't seem to happen in any other developed country
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Jul 13, 2014 19:21
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So why exactly don't they just reform the hukou or whatever? It's not like it would be hard to do, just change the law so municipal services are based on residency. What benefit is there for that outweighs the drawbacks? Is it convenient for municipalities and local politicians?
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Jul 16, 2014 02:56
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Isn't the hukou at least partly responsible for the housing crisis there because so much housing is under the table because there aren't enough official registrations to go around? Like is it actually effective at slowing down the migration to cities or is it still happening just with no way to otherwise control or regulate it?
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 03:24
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Surely at least some of them want to remain there, otherwise why would black market housing be such a big thing? Isn't part of the problem with housing there that housing is built that nobody is buying? Wouldn't getting rid of hukou restrictions mean more people could legally buy housing? Or is the overbuilt housing a different problem?
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 04:04
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So basically it's Japan Round Two: Electric Boogaloo?
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Sep 22, 2014 02:55
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Okay so it's Japan Round Two: Electric Boogaloo, now with even more incredibly unstable mega-bubbles?
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Sep 22, 2014 05:03
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I don't think it's at all given that a democratic China would have kept and continued to oppress Xinjiang/Tibet/Inner Mongolia, or that the Nationalists wouldn't have given up power. I don't think enough information exists to make such a prediction, like with many things in China, and speculation is therefore useless at best. At the same time I don't think the information really exists to think that the CCP won't give up power eventually. Even if it takes more than in South Korea and Taiwan, which is probably likely.
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Sep 22, 2014 18:01
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My Imaginary GF posted:...princeling friend whose father works in a provincial office.... Thomas Friedman, is that you?
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Sep 25, 2014 06:17
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So how exactly did Japan make it so much further on this model before imploding? I mean China is still significantly poorer than Japan was in 1990, what happened?
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Sep 29, 2014 21:19
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That's a side effect of state subsidization. All of the growth was in high tech manufacturing, and because of the subsidies there was no reason to invest in anything else, so 30 years later you're still using typewriters and fax machines even though you're producing cell phones and computers
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Sep 29, 2014 22:36
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Ceciltron posted:Some friends of mine collaborated on a piece addressing this specifically. If you'll allow me to dump some text: Whether or not the state controls all investment is irrelevant, what's relevant is that it is directing enough investment, and allowing enough easy credit to the bubble sectors that it is impacting the economy as a whole
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Sep 30, 2014 21:00
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I don't think there will be a price crash in China, the government is too willing to intervene in the economy and fudge numbers to let it happen. What will happen is a flatlining of GDP growth
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Oct 20, 2014 01:12
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The US isn't actually in decline, though. Growth in the US has been significantly better than Europe and Japan for a long time now, and looks like it might even be better than China in the future, depending on how badly China implodes. There's a very plausible scenario where the rest of the world basically goes down in flames and the US keeps trucking along, and that, at least with China, is seeming more likely every day
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Oct 22, 2014 00:44
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Fall Sick and Die posted:That's right, all democracies are friends. Pretty much, yes. They don't invade each other and, at least recently, don't put up massive trade barriers
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Oct 22, 2014 04:46
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computer parts posted:Your definition of democracy seems to be "agrees with the West". Do you have any examples of democracies that don't agree with the "West", or have consistently pursued a policy of military aggression towards it?
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Oct 22, 2014 04:52
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computer parts posted:Argentina re: The Falklands. Which is why I said "consistently". Argentina today isn't an "enemy of the West" by any meaningful metric.
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Oct 22, 2014 04:58
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The "the West sucks" narrative is bullshit pushed by the CCP as a justification for political control, HTH. There aren't actually any democracies hostile to the West, even countries like Iran mostly just want to be left alone and don't have any fundamental beef
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Oct 22, 2014 04:59
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computer parts posted:Define hostile, since apparently Russia doesn't count. Putin's Russia isn't a democracy? I mean, Russia today is about as democratic as Iran. Even then, Russia's actions are more or less predicated on the expansion of NATO and the EU into former Soviet territories
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Oct 22, 2014 05:07
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Fall Sick and Die posted:The problem is until the end of the Cold War the only democracies were in the western camp. The deck was stacked. The threat of the Soviet Union, Russia, terrorism, it gives democracies a reason to work together. Can you imagine the kind of government leader the average Henan voter would choose? I'm not saying they shouldn't have democracy, they should, but the average Chinese person's mentality at the moment is a lot more like America in the 19th century, which voted for leaders who expelled the Indians, ignored the constitution and conquered foreign territory. Do you think a democratic Chinese government would take the same actions in the South China Sea, or r/e Tibet and Xinjiang? I think democracies tend more towards isolationism than anything, they would be liable to tell Xinjiang to gently caress off and then deport all the Uighyrs out of Real China
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Oct 22, 2014 05:12
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The US and faced essentially no consequences of any kind for Iraq, which isn't true for other countries and other wars. If China went to war over the SCS and was embargoed by the rest of the world it would be hurt badly. Worst case scenario with Iraq the US lost nothing, which is essentially best case scenario for China and any wars it provokes. China has nothing to gain by picking a fight with the US, or even with Vietnam or the Philippines, and a democratic government would take actions that reflect that. I think the point is basically that democracies are a much better guarantee of good government. icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Oct 22, 2014 |
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Oct 22, 2014 05:17
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Also GDP growth
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Nov 24, 2014 13:42
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Probably the same as Japan, IE lower the interest rate to 0%, print money forever, and not actually fix the underlying problems ever, with no effect. The only difference is that the Chinese population might get pissed enough that the growth stopped so soon and with so much comical environmental damage that they'll threaten the stability of the government, in that case, who knows what happens
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Nov 26, 2014 00:16
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Jumpingmanjim posted:I never would have guessed that a stock market bubble would have killed off china before it's housing bubble did. Why not both at once? Japan did it, so can China
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Dec 8, 2014 16:56
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quote:
 At least the Japanese use actual German words as cool foreign sounding nonsense
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Dec 29, 2014 10:25
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Fojar38 posted:What of those countries don't want the Chinese to come and build a bunch of infrastructure that nobody will use? I doubt India would be keen on the prospect of the Chinese building most of their stuff for example. In fact China has cheesed off most of its neighbours in Southeast Asia as well. That leaves Africa but Africa remains a very unstable place to invest. I don't understand how building infrastructure in India is supposed to help China's economy? Is it just that China's government literally doesn't know how to do anything other than public works projects? So now that China itself is saturated with infrastructure, they're forced to go build infrastructure elsewhere, because doing the things that will actually fix their country is beyond their competence? pedro0930 posted:The GDP per capita of China may be low, but there is still a middle class with significant disposal income in the major cities. Just 1% of the Chinese population needs to have something resembling a middle class income and you have over ten million Chinese people to support a consumer economy after all. Isn't China already some of the largest consumer of all sorts of consumer goods in the world? That's good if you're a foreign company exporting things to China, but the relative size is important for the structural health of China's economy.
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Apr 1, 2015 03:40
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FrozenVent posted:I don think those huge infrastructure projects are intended to turn a profit. They're intended to keep people employed. Yeah but they're not building them in China, they're building them in other countries. Keeping Zimbabweans or Indians employed is irrelevant to China. I think China thinks if it gives enough money to other countries they'll be contractually obligated to be Chinese allies, and that this will get China international influence? Somehow? That's not going to happen, Zimbabwe and friends will disappear the second the money stops coming. I don't think China quite understand how diplomacy works. The US has a military that can regime change whoever they want whenever they want, and can through sanctions can cripple a country's economy by locking them out of the entire developed world, and on top of that has more money to give out. China doesn't have any sticks to deal with foreign countries, only carrots icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 05:59
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Peel posted:Is national PPP GDP a useful measure of anything? PPP per capita gives you a better idea of quality of life No that's pretty much it. The relation between PPP and nominal has to do with some macroeconomic fuckery and I'm sure is very interesting, but it's a useless measure of international clout or influence, which is what people comparing the GDPs want to do
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Apr 2, 2015 00:38
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Shifty Pony posted:Maybe a stock market implosion and wiping out everyone who was invested either directly in high interest "investments" or in banks neck deep in the same will spur a safety net program similarly to how the Great Depression led to SS? Safety nets cost money, and China's still pretty poor on the world scale. Remember a huge chunk of China's population is still in subsistence farming territory, even if it's less than 50% and shrinking. A Japan-style economic implosion would only encourage them to kill off any welfare programs they have in a desperate attempt to jumpstart growth by continuing to shovel money into infrastructure investment. Again based on Japan, actually fixing demographic issues would probably be the very last thing they try as they pretty much just sit back and hope if they close their eyes and open them again the boom years will magically be back. China's probably just going to slide back into developing country territory. It might end up looking like a somewhat less dysfunctional Russia. Which isn't saying a whole lot, because Russia is mega ultra dysfunctional icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 02:34
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Trammel posted:A 1.4 billion population, dysfunctional Russia. I just hope it keeps it retains the whole "middle-kingdom" focus in that case. Probably? They don't really have anyone to invade besides maybe Vietnam? The Philippines? China spent the past 2000 years gobbling up all its neighbors, the Ukraine scenario has already happened if you're Tibet, Xinjiang or Mongolia. They probably won't start a war with Japan because Japan is strong enough to fight back. They're not really any threat to the USA
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Apr 10, 2015 05:13
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shrike82 posted:How exactly is china analogous to russia beyond "they have a lot of problems with corruption"? Because they're an authoritarian, quasi-rogue state stuck in the middle income trap but with enough power and influence to make their neighbors' lives a headache Maybe the average Chinese person lives better than the average Russian (this isn't even true right now, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for the future), but that's about the only difference from a geopolitical perspective. China's export economy has already hit the limit of its expansion as China competes now with the entire developing world and first world demand is only so great. An economy dependent on exports is a liability, not a strength. To be honest having oil might actually be preferable for the Chinese government, because you can buy fancy military equipment disproportionate to what your normal economy could produce icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Apr 10, 2015 |
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Apr 10, 2015 18:30
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TheBalor posted:I don't think it's doomed, but I'm not sanguine about the CCP's chances to keep their stranglehold. Nah the CCP is fine. It's everything else about China whose prospects aren't so hot, mostly because of the CCP being fine
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Apr 10, 2015 19:26
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Femur posted:Since economics is largely fraud, you should take any service based transition to be a lie as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity Read and be amazed
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Apr 14, 2015 00:32
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Xibanya posted:If China's economy craters in the next decade, what consequences will that have for the American economy? Will it hamper infrastructure development in places like Tanzania? None, and not really RE: Third world infrastructure, remember most of it isn't actually useful for the host countries, it's built 100% for the purpose of resource extraction by Chinese corporations. It's like the infrastructure built by classical European colonial governments. Most of it doesn't even employ native workers, they bring in workers from China and run it as a self-contained thing icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Apr 14, 2015 |
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Apr 14, 2015 18:21
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Bip Roberts posted:Taiwan, South Korea. Arguably the only true consumption based economy in the world is the US, even Germany and Japan are still dependent on exports to a degree, and South Korea and Taiwan are even worse. The basic problem is that high growth is just straight up not possible in the absence of an export economy. China's just too big to use that anymore, and unless they do serious reforms of their country, which won't happen, growth is going to collapse whatever7 posted:Its an ideological battle between Washington Consensus (free market directed development model) vs Beijing Consensus (Authoritarian central directed development model). The third world tried socialism already, it was called "the 20th Century". The reason the Washington Consensus is a thing is because economic planning failed miserably at producing growth, at least in countries that were not suckling at the teat of exporting poo poo to the USA. The Beijing Consensus is basically just China giving out free money to third world countries, but without economic growth accompanying it they will be unable to compete with the US in the long run. The Soviets tried the same thing, propping up places like Cuba and NK with economic aid, but they still lost in the end because the American economy is an unbeatable 800 pound gorilla that could double or triple the aid that the Soviet economy was putting out without lifting a finger. The idea that the American economy is stagnating or in decline is the opposite of reality, and if the CCP is basing their calculus on this assumption then lol they're going to get their rear end beat bad icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 01:22
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An authoritarian command economy and its allies take on the US and the other liberal capitalist states on the geopolitical stage, in a sort of 'cold' war - a thing that has never happened before and definitely didn't end in the complete victory of liberalism. Like I honestly don't understand how or why anyone would take the USSR in the Cold War as a good geopolitical model, considering how badly they got beaten. The only explanation is that people think China is simply special and superior and not bound by earthly realities The predictions about the US stagnating are sort of like Trotsky predicting in the early 40s that the postwar US would be plagued with permanant recession icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 18:24
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Ardennes posted:Also, I don't think they are especially that interested in a new Cold War even if so many Americans seem to desperately want one again. China's PR campaign about America's decline and its rounding up of the world's failed states as allies says otherwise I think. They probably don't want to actually have to fight a cold war, but they definitely seem to want the image of being a cold war grade rival of the United States. I don't see why the US should tolerate it, especially if China continues with its policy of annexing other countries' territory at will icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Apr 20, 2015 |
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Apr 20, 2015 19:07
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