China's PPP should reduce in half this year. It has seen massive layoffs from every industry (average 22% decline in revenue across all industries). It has seen 50% reduction in wages, even in stable positions like government offices. It has seen unpaid wages for anywhere from a few months up to a year!!
This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline
Huh? Even the most bearish projections about Chinese economic growth are at about 3% per year. For PPP to actually halve you'd have to actually see a recession comparable to the Great Depression, the Peso Crisis in the 90s, or the 2015 EU+US sanctions in Russia.
China IS in a Great Depression. The government is making the numbers seem a little bit better, but with 21% official youth unemployment rate - definitely higher since netizens have found that only 20% of this year's graduate has secured jobs, and 50% - 70% reduction in real estate listing prices, when real estate is 30% of China's economy and how local governments mostly gets funded, we will see retroactively that China entered its Great Depression in 2022.
Chinese youth unemployment in 2023 is roughly comparable to the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) in the 2010s. Those countries still held around a 2-3% GDP growth rate.
Also, the bearish 2-3% growth rate estimation was derived independently of the PRC government - it was reached by both Blackstone and the IMF.
None of this is to say there isn't an economic malaise/recession in the PRC circa 2023, but honestly it's playing out the same way a similar growth slowdown happened in Mexico, Türkiye, South Korea, Thailand, and Brazil in the 2000s when those countries hit similar economic metrics to China in the early 2020s.
1.) China's unemployment rate is no where near comparable to europe's. China considers one employed if one has worked at least ONE hour a week. or if their family have land to farm.
2.) There's nothing comparable to what's happening to China right now, except for the Russia sanctions, where an entire economic engine (export, 25% of GDP) is being ripped out or shut down, by companies pulling factories out of China
3.) Blackstone and IMF have been plenty wrong before. also, there's no chance they don't at least use some part of the data from the Chinese's National office of statistics.
The PRC is absolutely in a recession. No one is arguing against that, but to say a recession will lead to a 50% collapse in GDP is absolutely ludicrous.
The only middle income countries that have seen such a dramatic collapse in GDP are those in an active state of war like Ukraine, Syria, or Lebanon.
Property values are something like 70% of China's wealth, but only 30% of production. A GDP drop of 15% is very conceivable.
I think it's likely GP is wrong about the 50% figure, but if they were correct the CCP would never publish the number for fear of scaring away foreign investment. So it may be worth looking into more deeply.
You can't have either the US or China in a great depression without it taking everyone down with them. If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world. If china is in a great depression, apple stock would have cratered as would most indices around the world. Go read about the 1929 stock crash. Money front runs economic depressions. Meaning wall street will let us know.
The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang. China was supposed to collapse decades ago according to the anti-china "experts". Today it's the like of peter zeihan and youtube grifters like serpentza, et al. Same old nonsense - economic collapse, falun gong genocide, organ harvesting, environmental devastation, end of "da ccp". All of that turned out to be outright lies in the 2000s.
My advice is stop watching silly youtube videos by silly grifters and silly news from silly media organizations. Watch the money. If one day, the dow or s&p drops 10% ( even with circuit breakers ), then we may have something. If it continues to drop and stay down, then we may have something. Can't believe the amount of nonsense people believe when it comes to china. Especially when it's the same old debunked nonsense.
At this point I don't know whether people like gordon chang or peter zeihan work for "da USA" or "da CCP". Cause their outlandish bullshit always end up being wrong and making china look good in the end.
Do I seem like a person who has or hasn't dealt with people who spam a list of links before? Also it's not that one person did, it's that all of them did. It was state backed propaganda.
The organ "harvesting" is something that happened in chinese dominant countries. Even in taiwan, which strangely enough didn't get the same "press" coverage. But I'm guessing you already knew that.
Whatever happened to the "death camps" in china with millions of muslims? Did that turn out to be fake as well? We had satelite images and graphic testimony and congress even pass a bill declaring it a genocide. And then magically radio silence. That's exactly what happened back then too.
But then again, we send warships along the chinese coast and accuse them of threatening us.
> If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world
And how did you arrive at this conclusion? US seems fine right now with record low unemployment, strong dollar, and increased factory activities. While detachment from China is already in progress, with China's export slumped 7.5% in May, which is atrocious since that number is compared from a year ago when China was in lockdown. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/chinas-exports-plunge-by-7po.... Fact is, the world is moving away from China, and it seems to be doing ok, but China is suffering from double digit decline in real estate/export/retail.
> The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang
Yes, discount everything logical because of one pundit who is too early. Nevermind most of the business leaders this year have mentioned moving business/factories out of China as a long term plan.
> Watch the money
No, watch all the multinationals pull factories out of China. watch the increasing panic from normal Chinese citizen online video with respect to foreclosure/job loss/unemployment. then watch the money.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily (exclusively?) for nationalistic/political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so I need to ask you to stop doing this.
It's fine to occasionally post on divisive or political topics as part of a general mix, but we ban accounts when they are primarily used for that, and single-purpose accounts are definitely not ok here. We want curious conversation, which is pretty much the opposite of these things.
Meanwhile, China's solar industry is in rapid decline, dropping 40% in market cap y/y, due to overcapacity, falling price margins, bans on goods from China's Xinjiang region, and increased non-Chinese solar growth - US's solar industry seem to be on the rise. China's solar industry should follow similar trends as its electronics industry, with massive pullout of factories to other countries, and eventually only mostly servicing China's internal markets.
Harvard Business Review will do a case study on Disney on how to best avoid tackling a new customer segment and piss off/insult your core users at the same time
here's the thing, humanity got lucky. there was a nonzero chance that china and the dictatorships could have triumphed. if China didn't botch the chance to overtake US in 2008 with a capable dictator. if China got its hands on many advanced US military technologies. if Russia didn't botch the Ukraine invasion. if covid didn't have a vaccine, except one that China developed.
I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if somehow China succeeded, and that's most of humanity's fate.
I don't think that China has any interest in conquering the rest of World. They just want to be rich. They are stealing IP and spying. The fact that the US needs to use military force is a failure of policy.
Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.
I think that China is pulling on the US what the US did to the Soviet Union. The US bankrupted the Soviet Union with an arms race. China is doing it much more economically by spending 1/3 of the US. This is money that the US could be using to build a high speed rail network or educating its citizens.
that's not how economics works. if that's the case, you would not see the Chinese governments (federal and local) doing desperate things to collect more revenues like:
- issuing massive traffic/parking tickets a year after, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, to commercial and normal drivers
- banks preventing normal withdrawals of money. often, deceased's children can't withdraw their parents savings, even with all the official documentations
It is. You can erase all debts by hyperinflation, for example.
China for sure has problems, but it's not the "crashing down tomorrow" kind of problems. They still have a robust growth, now that COVID restrictions are over.
lol, how presumptuous. I have visited China in 2007, before it turned authoritarian/dictatorship. I would not visit China again to support the dictatorship. I can visit any number of democratic countries like Taiwan.
I feel for those who don't get that they are supporting evil.
Btw, speaking of evil, China isn't giving up yet (Xi still have 10-20 years to live. free organ transplants from young Chinese, you know. high ranking politicians get them for free). It is producing destroyers at a massive rate, and will exceed # of destroyers that US has by 2040. Combined with the millions of disposable unemployed single young men, and there's still a chance that Taiwan would overwhelmed. and if Taiwan falls, the same strategy can be used to conquer Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia.
Bear in mind that China has pretty much no oil and these 055 destroyer boats are diesel&gas turbine powered. And the US has been slowly winding down military presence since the Cold War ended basically[1].
And lemme tell you, if Taiwan goes hot, there wont be any USN boats spare to patrol the Middle East -> South China sea route, and nobody would be angry if any oil tankers on that route go missing.
There is oil in Sakhalin Island, new pipelines are planned and existing railways are fully capable to transport enough oil to sustain military campaign if China curtains civilian oil consumption (like every country at war did in WW2).
Frankly highlighting China dependence on maritime trade is a cope. It just won’t matter much in hot war.
There is no logical, or even mythical, reason to conquer another territory (excluding taiwan from this). China really wants to be involved in long term insurgencies across Asia? Why?
Great in which way? I guess working for peanuts is a great step up for people who suffered through famines.
Otherwise it's the common battle between "orderliness at any cost" and freedoms. US or Europe seems to strike a better balance, for all of their shortcomings. In China its ruled by the CCP with an iron fist.
The "greatness" of China is an excellent example of Cheops' Law: You can do anything you put your mind to if you have an endless supply of expendable labor.
Actually US and China is disengaging, and we can already see what would happen if trade were to stop tomorrow, by what's happening now.
China June 2023: Massive reverse migration by laborers back to countryside, Shanghai population down 135k compared to 2021 https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3215126/s.... Physical retail closures up to 80%. Entirely empty malls in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Real estate prices dropping 30-50% in tier 1 cities. Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing having 50k+ used homes for sale in span of 2 months. Shipping containers pile up 7 stories in every port https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3210870/c....
You can tell any story you want by cherry-picking headlines and ignoring the broader context. Pundits like Gordon Chang have been predicting post-Mao China's imminent collapse since 1989.
They've always been spectacularly wrong because they don't understand China and don't want to.
You can brush any counterpoints away you want by mentioning pundits who are too early in their prediction.
Sure, let's talk about broader context and macro trends. unless something big changes, these macro trends won't go away:
- alignment of dictatorship vs free countries. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran vs US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Australia, Philippines, Canada.
- dictatorship is losing. China is propping up all the dictators around the world, and its losing that power
- China demographics collapse
- China's rising and insolvent local government debts, which can no longer generate income by selling land. because China has too many buildings - 6 billion by last count. and demographics collapse. and lack of jobs
- Tech sanctions on China. China's inability to catch up on tech.
which indicates China's stagnation and decline for the next 10-20 years.
unfortunately far-right populist illiberalism is on the rise globally. (and also far-left populist demagoguery too, maybe unsurprisingly.) although, hopefully, that'll pass as the current median voter gets a grasp of reality (and get inoculated against social media fueled craziness at least a bit)
here's the thing, humanity got lucky. there was a nonzero chance that china and the dictatorships could have triumphed. if China didn't botch the chance to overtake US in 2008 with a capable dictator. if China got its hands on many advanced US military technologies. if Russia didn't botch the Ukraine invasion. if covid didn't have a vaccine, except one that China developed.
I'm sure most of us are aware of the gulags that China ran in 2022, in the most prosperous city like Shanghai, with welded doors, lack of food, arbitrary killing of pets, moving their own citizens against their wills to camps or cells with no running water and unsanitary conditions. with cries in tall buildings from families in the middle of night for food. If. you haven't seen these things, go watch it online. Imagine if somehow China succeeded, and that's all of humanity's fate.
China is no longer the "world's factory". It will stagnate for 10+ years, similar to Japan's lost decades, but with worser birth rate than Japan today. It reported 8M babies in 2022, low that was last reached in 1940s.
We've never seen a large portion (25%+) of a large modern economy vanish in a span of a few years. (factories moving out, which decreases downstream economic activities such as real estate and retail).
> China is no longer the "world's factory". It will stagnate for 10+ years, similar to Japan's lost decades, but with worser birth rate than Japan today.
idk, Japan seems like it thought the party would go on forever, whereas China does seem to have clear eyes with it comes to world politics (eg. long-term investment in the rest of Asia and Africa).
> We've never seen a large portion (25%+) of a large modern economy vanish in a span of a few years.
Do you recall NAFTA? or the quick rise of China not long after? These are still studied as huge exogenous economic shocks in business schools!
> China does seem to have clear eyes with it comes to world politics
You're hyping up Xi Jing Ping, who is considered an idiot in most elite circles including Putin, too much. One belt and one road is now considered a failure with Italy, the most prominent member, dropping out of it this year. Most of the countries that took on the debt are unable to pay it back, and China has had to forgive a lot of the loans recently. And no one has aligned US, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, India, Australia, Nato quite like China in recent years. The most recent focus in G7 was squarely on China.
> NAFTA
with respect to NAFTA, US manufacturing only consisted of 15% US economy in 1994 https://www.stlouisfed.org/en/on-the-economy/2017/april/us-m..., whereas Chinese manufacturing consisted 30% of China's economy today. Also, the difference is, the laborers in US manufacturing moved to other higher paying jobs, as a result, average income went from 25k to 30k in 2000. Whereas what we're seeing now with Chinese laborers is that they're moving back home to countryside to farm (< $1 a day)
>You're hyping up Xi Jing Ping, who is considered an idiot in most elite circles including Putin, too much.
I don't really care what Putin says but I do think they are thinking more long-term. Only here and in Europe do people think in terms of election cycles. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Xi fanboy, and I definitely don't want to the US to be like China in general terms, but I just disagree with you. I think they know that the US-centric money flow was capricious and they have been long making plans for when it isn't what it was.
Now, put those in real numbers and you will see the effect! Also, do you not think 15% of the world's biggest economy taking a fucking as being significant? We had to pivot to service industries after that!
I can tell that you have a hard-held opinion on this and I am not fighting with you, I just think that your original post was not as nuanced as reality.
Long term would be recognizing that almost every authoritarian nation is poorer than almost every democracy. Mexico's gross national income is higher than China's on a per capita basis.
I think you misread my point. My point regarding NAFTA was that US did not actually lose a portion of its economic output when the manufacturing declined. The old factory workers switched to a more profitable job, thus the income increase. In fact, the country was then joined by migrant workers from Mexico because of NAFTA taking away their farming jobs in Mexico. Thus US's economy thrived in 90s.
But when China lose most of the foreign manufacturing jobs, it lost a significant portion of its economic output. Because now these workers just went back home to countryside to farm.
By your numbers and those of others, both Eastasia and Eurasia are taking it on the chin. Oceania suffers from sociopolitical rot but the economy is pretty lively.
With a larger population combined with more of a chance of living past the age of 5, you need fewer births to get the same population growth rate globally. As the world population rapidly urbanizes we will settle into a new normal that will still approach Earth's carrying capacity faster than we can adequately react.
Human population has overshot in 1971[1], what are you talking about? Carrying capacity has long been exceeded, we’re living thanks to the phantom carrying capacity[2].
I see marriage rates falling by about 50% over the past decade. But this claim seems unlikely, or perhaps just badly skewed by the seasonality of things.
He is probably talking about the "520" Marriage Day. May 20 is a popular national marriage day (due to tradition) and many couples choose to get marry on that day in China.
This year's 520 marriage rate is ~40% of last year's.
One government sponsored number, vs multiple numbers pointing to China's economic decline, which multinationals check in order to gauge the real health of China's economy. Multinationals know the real numbers, which is why they're all leaving.
You do realize that the Yuan losing 7% against the dollar meant that export numbers looked like it dropped by a similar percentage in May right? The reports are all using USD to show such a huge drop. In reality if the reports were to use RMB, exports only dropped .8% meaning they are exporting roughly as much as before in raw numbers.
Right now China isn't pouring money into industry because it frankly never needed it. With the opening, more money is now being pumped into reopening services in China, that's why when you look at the PMI for services it's much higher, because people are taking money out of industry (unless it's high tech oriented) and parking it in services. People aren't necessarily consuming more, but it doesn't mean they aren't using much more services than they previously were, and eating out more, etc. GDP doesn't only look at industrial output.
BTW. All the other numbers you cited in the other articles were also provided by the Chinese government.
>On a quarter-by-quarter basis, GDP grew 2.2% in January-March, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed, compared with expectations for a 2.2% increase and a revised 0.6% rise in the previous quarter.
It's also fundementally omitting how much PRC has entrenched itself as global factory than ever.
PRC exports to US/west near record highs while trade with global south have exceeded western bloc. The only reason export decline notable is because PRC exports has increased so spectacularly in the past few years (export value grew from 2.5T in 2019 to 3.6T in 2022) that there's nowhere to go but down when global economy underperforms. Net export value is still up ~40% since 2019 - exports stats can be confirmed bilaterally. PRC exports grew as much in last 4 years (~1T) as it did in decade between 2008-2018 (1.4T-2.4T). Meanwhile US increased imports from "friendshore" countries mirrored PRC increased exports to those countries, i.e. it's tarrif engineering and US import dependence on PRC ultimately still increasing.
Sure, according to the Ukrainian sources, after the Ukrainian state persecutes anyone who publishes factual information which does not align with its propaganda campaign (like the bloggers who posted videos of "interception"). Meanwhile, the US side reluctantly admits [1] "minimal" damages from those "reportedly neutralised" Kinzhals. Also the Saudis would like to have a talk about miracle effectiveness of Patriots.
> Meanwhile, the US side reluctantly admits [1] "minimal" damages from those "reportedly neutralised" Kinzhals.
Ever heard of debris? A Patriot system so minimally damaged that it’s already repaired does in no way suggest, as you seem to imply, it being directly hit by Kinzhal missiles. Especially considering that it was actively targeted.
Saudis have also massive problem with nepotism and incompetency. Btw why would Russia suddenly arrested its scientist developing those unstoppable missiles? To give them Hero of Russia reward?
I mean that's the reality of most missiles advertised as hypersonic. Outside of their terminal stage most of them only have the flight characteristics of a cold war fighter
China should fall pretty quickly behind Europe as well this year. China's economy has fallen off the cliff - 80% decrease in foreign orders, 20% official youth unemployment rate, 50% reduction in home prices, 80% decrease in government land sales
China is no longer a partner to US, but a competitor and adversary. To Europe and Japan as well. China made that very clear when they announced unlimited friendship with Russia last year.
It's Russia + China + Iran vs Europe + US + Japan + Taiwan + South Korea + Australia + Canada
>80% decrease in foreign orders, 20% official youth unemployment rate, 50% reduction in home prices, 80% decrease in government land sales
I do not find these figures to be credible. They would an indicate a cataclysmic, wartime level sort of economic collapse that I see no evidence of.
Since you post this kind of stuff all the time, I can't help but feel that you have an axe to grind. Not that I would blame you for hating the Chinese government, but still... are you sure that you are not being irrational about its prospects?
I get the feeling you intended this quote as a gotcha, but it actually appears to be a manifestation of how they "walked it back" considering that "China's cooperation with Europe and other nations is 'endless'".
de-dollarization is mainly happening with China, and it's only because Chinese economy is crashing fast (50% real estate price cut in matter of months, 100k+ housing inventory for sale in major tier 1 cities, 80% factory order decline from foreign companies), and it needs to have access to dollar to pay back its huge debt - 400% debt to gdp, and Guizhou just became the first Chinese province to declare bankruptcy last month.
China does not have aspirations for Yuan to become a world reserve currency, because that would imply opening their economy to outside investors and run deficits. They want to retain control over their economy while decreasing their exposure to the dollar, so what they do is try to trade in Yuan with their direct trade partners, and any trade imbalances to be settled using gold via the Shanghai stock exchange gold futures contract.
aka, china wants to have all the advantages of a reserve currency, without suffering any of the disadvantages (yes, there are disadvantages that the US suffers from the dollar being a reserve).
I wouldn't say they would have all the advantages of a reserve currency. They will still have to find a way transform the foreign currency they accumulate into useful stuff. I think their primary concern is avoiding the dollar, since they quite a big exposure to it, and after they have seen what happened to Russia, their not too keen on maintaining the status quo.
> because that would imply opening their economy to outside investors and run deficits.
And investors ultimately choose what the priorities of the organization are…
So that means this is probably “what happened in 1971” that decoupled labor from productivity — the US ceded labor sovereignty to the “market” that is global capitalism and “the market” started treating labor as a global market but with proceeds only going to capital owners.
> Guizhou just became the first Chinese province to declare bankruptcy last month
This is false, which is sad considering you're calling someone out for being wrong.
No province in China has declared bankruptcy. You're probably conflicting this from reports from questionable sources that it might happen given Guizhou's debt and poor finances, but it didn't happen.
yes. the covid lockdowns were just a tip of the iceberg, which was of course also happened to be on fire, and everything around it is on fire too.
the service-goods shift during COVID and the shiftback after, coupled with the energy and food price shocks due to Russia-Ukraine war, definitely did not help the Chinese economy, that was already faking a higher GDP growth to paper over the cracks.
geopolitical tea leaves reading experts point to the aging population of China as a massive problem (again coupled with a lot of factors that make it a worse problem than it would be with a relatively open society, etc.), the limits to efficiency gains from centralization and big infrastructure projects (only so many miles of high-speed rail have positive ROI, only so many big dams make sense, etc), and - again - the cost of maintaining the authoritarian state.
The OP speaks of tea leaf reader, which makes this a secondhand reading of tea leaves. Reading tea leaves is essentially writing fiction - is this not how the comment was meant to be read?
Also, China's economy is crashing hard. China is now entering its third year of its own Great Depression, with 30% unemployment rate, 90% unemployment rate for new grads (it's so bad, Guangzhou government just sent 300k youth to countryside for a program), 80% retail collapse (entirely empty malls in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen), 50% real estate price collapse. Guizhou is the first province to declare bankruptcy ever.
According to the office for national statistics in China, for jan/feb of 2023 http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/202303/27/t20230327_38464161..., car manufacturing profits is down 41%. non-metal products manufacturing profits is down 39%. chemicals manufacturing profits is down 56%. electronics manufacturing profits is down 71%!! In fact, all businesses have dropped 22% in profit. Not to mention the 1M+ SMB that failed in the last 2 years.
Apple, dell, hp, lg, Kyocera are all shifting manufacturing out of China. Apple by 50% by 2025, Dell by 2027. It is estimated that China's portion of worldwide phone production will drop from 90% to 50% by 2025, and worldwide laptop production 70% to 30% by 2027.
This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline
China’s Latest Source of Unrest: Unpaid ‘Zero Covid’ Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/world/asia/china-covid-pr...
China's Industrial profits in the January-March period declined 21.4% from a year earlier https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-27/china-s-i...