teuchter
je suis teuchter
Let's hope that Pickman's model 's predictions of 2025 war are as accurate as his prediction that Brexit was not actually going to happen.
Let's talk about China
- Thread starter not-bono-ever
- Start date
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
i would like nothing better than to find my prognostication of war between the united states and the people's republic of china were fruitless. but the trajectory the two powers are on seems as likely to end in peace as you are to post a thoughtful and well-constructed argument
gosub
~#
Si vis pacem para bellum
dilute micro
esse quam videri
A lot of things covered but… thoughts?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Can't watch the video but I've seen some of his commentary before and he says some ridiculous things, such as force being the only unifying factor in a China that is not integrated between the regions. That wasn't true a hundred years ago when it did fall apart into competing warlordisms and it's less true now. Anything in there that does stand out as less pulled out of his arse? I see on a quick look at his site he mentions demographics, which is certainly a massive challenge, but again not sure it's to a point of collapse.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
He's been predicting that for the last 20 years. I suppose he'll be proved right on a long enough timeline.
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NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Who is this guy? Given that anyone can upload videos to YouTube it might be helpful if you shared what you know of his background.
gosub
~#
Well then he was listened to about 8 years ago. Demographics and upside down Xmas trees has got to be a thing, though China is not unique in that. Rest the world didn't have a one child policy though education and development will trend you towards less kids.. later..anyway so added head wind.
Out and about so didn't watch ..bur flicking trough transcript (handy when they have that (though cuts in radio budgets are showing and it is nice to have something other than repeat on in background usually)..
As I said somebody listened once , not sure how often he puts stuff out cos some of that is a couple of months old (lack of econ data -) Fair to say markets took that as too bad to even lie about and reacted accordingly even had time for Beijing to complain its all wonderful and Yanks are doing psych warfare talking their problems up. Youth unemployment is sky high though. Not sure how this fella equates that with not enough young consumers to drive growth.
can't argue that shipping isn't a good tell-tale Coz it is , but you can precursor it. I can't believe they credit Bob the Builder with big fish, little fish, cardboard box
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
He's a generalist who has written a number of books on global economics issues. He tends to make a lot of his predictions based on demographic trends.
Peter Zeihan - Wikipedia
I watch his videos, but I compare his ideas against a number of other sources.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
I don't know anything about him. I figured someone here might know.
His video got recommended to me by Youtube.
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Almost all of the west and countries that have modernized their economies, have suffered from demographic problems. China's situation is a just a bit worse because of their one child policies.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
I thought they ditched one child a few years ago now?
ETA they did in 2015. But it was in place since 79 so that’s a whole generation of single child families, followed a heap of no child couples these days. It’s not a good combination.
ETA they did in 2015. But it was in place since 79 so that’s a whole generation of single child families, followed a heap of no child couples these days. It’s not a good combination.
gosub
~#
China moved to 2 child in 2015. Then, after the 21 census found birthrate was still declining pushed the string to a 3 child policy
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
Yes, they've never rebounded and don't look like they will any time soon.
gosub
~#
Careful now sounds a lot like communism.
Can't see the people who bought and paid for the empty houses would be too happy
krtek a houby
Against all gods
There's thousands of empty houses here, it's a huge thing. People moving away, villages being abandoned. Also because of bureaucracy and/or relatives who aren't arsed with inheriting etc. It's a real shame. How bad is it in China?
JimW
支那暗杀团
Famously full of unfinished developments and overstock from the bubble. Often not of the type and location most needed to be fair.
Agree with you about Zeihan, I saw something where he predicted that China would break up like the Soviet Union because of the economic problems and can't really take him seriously after that. Even in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet the Han population is too large now for them to realistically secede. Centuries (or even millenia) of a centralised education system and standardised written language means that Chinese national identity is unusually strong.
I think he has a point about the economic troubles China faces but I don't think he has a good enough understanding of Chinese politics or society to predict how these problems will manifest.
JimW
支那暗杀团
Strikes me that a lot of the conventional economic takes fall down when they're applied to an entity as large as China, especially with a state able and willing to act in ways that wouldn't be possible elsewhere. There's such a raft of potentially showstopping issues that it does seem like a bike careening downhill ready to crash any minute but then never does, and that surely points up the inadequacies of the interpretative model (rather than some magic powers of the CCP).
I also find it interesting how the discourse gets applied differently to India, which can be a useful comparator due to its similar size and diversity, plus achieving independence at around the same time at the PRC was founded - as one example, surely India has like massive disparities in wealth yet is currently being touted as the coming thing. Then there's the open communal conflicts. That's not to say that there aren't a host of real and pressing problems in China, just that a lot of these commentaries are too far removed from the situation on the ground to be much use. The level of youth unemployment ought to be driving social unrest but it's probably lower currently than during the early 2000s (? memory might be failing me) land grabs, including the anger at COVID measures.
I think India is still at an earlier stage of development. As you say China was more chaotic in the 2000s, but it got hyped as the next big thing far more than India is being hyped now. There was a greater pace of change then with mass urbanisation and double digit economic growth and some degree of unpredictability, so things like unrest from farmers were considered to be temporary growing pains rather than long term structural problems.
I'm not sure if any of the negative predictions about China's economic problems have been wrong fundamentally, even if they avoided financial crisis, the downwards revision of their performance is down to the same factors of excessive debt-financed infrastructure spending, reliance on Real estate, and low consumer spending that many predicted.
It's easy to forget just how optimistic the predictions were in the late 00s and early 10s. As recently as 2017 some Chinese economists were predicting Chinese GDP to be 3x larger than the US by 2050 for instance.
李稻葵：2049年，中国经济总量将3倍于美国，周边国家谁还敢跟我们叫板？-中青在线
李稻葵：2049年，中国经济总量将3倍于美国，周边国家谁还敢跟我们叫板？：清华大学中国与世界经济研究中心主任李稻葵提出，如果2049年中国人均GDP达到美国的75%左右，那时中国的GDP总量将是美国的3倍。今天一些民营企业家渐渐加大海外投资，而中国一定要想方设法营造一个比较好的投资环境，让我们自己的民营企业家留在国内。
m.cyol.com
The headlining grabbing stuff about a collapse is just sensationalism, but the naysayers have been largely correct I would say - until recently it was taken for granted that this would be China's Century.
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Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
If China's economy collapses, it will be because of the sheer level of internal corruption. People who have objected to corruption have been subjected to suppression by the government. Over time that's got to corrode China's future prospects. The bank failures and real estate investment schemes, where people lost everything, are undermining trust in the system. The other factor is that Xi seems to out of touch, weeding out anyone who knew what was happening, and replacing them with "yes men." Shutting down dissent is going to be a bad thing in the long run.
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Yossarian
⏭️
Life in prison for an Uyghur folklorist whose only crime was being an Uyghur folklorist.
I thought Human Rights Watch put it well:
Professor Dawut’s sentence is not evidence of any wrongdoing on her part, but of Beijing’s unrelenting cultural persecution of Uyghurs, hostility to free expression, and disdain for fair trial rights – all serious violations of international law.
This development should catalyze renewed international calls for an independent investigation into crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and prompt the academic institutions with which Dawut has had ties, including Cambridge, Cornell, and Harvard Universities, to call for her immediate release.
The Chinese government could not make any clearer their chillingly methodical efforts to silence – for life – those Uyghur voices with different views, no matter how peacefully articulated those views are. The outstanding question is whether the rest of the world will let them get away with it.
www.hrw.org
The sooner the Chinese economy collapses and brings the fucking hideous regime down with it, the better
I thought Human Rights Watch put it well:
Professor Dawut’s sentence is not evidence of any wrongdoing on her part, but of Beijing’s unrelenting cultural persecution of Uyghurs, hostility to free expression, and disdain for fair trial rights – all serious violations of international law.
This development should catalyze renewed international calls for an independent investigation into crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and prompt the academic institutions with which Dawut has had ties, including Cambridge, Cornell, and Harvard Universities, to call for her immediate release.
The Chinese government could not make any clearer their chillingly methodical efforts to silence – for life – those Uyghur voices with different views, no matter how peacefully articulated those views are. The outstanding question is whether the rest of the world will let them get away with it.
Chinese Court Imposes Life Sentence on Uyghur Scholar
On Thursday, the human rights group Dui Hua Foundation confirmed that Chinese authorities have handed down a life sentence on the internationally renowned Uyghur ethnographer Rahile Dawut. This outrageous sentence follows Dawut’s six years of arbitrary detention, punctuated only by a secret...
The sooner the Chinese economy collapses and brings the fucking hideous regime down with it, the better
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
gosub
~#
'Even 1.4 billion people can't fill all empty homes': Former Chinese official on property crisis - Times of India
China News: With over 1.4 billion people, China is the second most populous country in the world today. Yet, even its staggering population will not be able to f
m.timesofindia.com
On top of that...
Healthcare. that's regionally devolved and they were largely funding it through land sales ...plus there's a lot a system that is tied up with what was. Jobs/investment / savings etc . + friction between a bust regional and national dreaming bigger picture. This is a statistically significant bubble pop (ie worthy of click bait worn cliches)
teuchter
je suis teuchter
The summary of that news story is that the estimated number of empty homes in china, depending on which expert you ask, varies by a factor of about a thousand - might be twice the population of the country or might be 0.2% of the population. So, that's really useful knowledge.
gosub
~#
Long read . Significant document
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Very long. Five second scan gives a “we’re not planning on nuking you” vibe.
Cid
Proper break this time
Corruption in China... it's not that simple. I'll try and write a precis tomorrow (I started, but then also started drinking), but for now I'll stick up a lecture by Yuen Yuen Ang. Super quick summary is that a lot of illegal corruption in China specifically is more akin to legalised structures of lobbying and access to contracts in western capitalism. Measures like OECD corruption index are really quite bad at capturing this (being essentially based on the perceptions of major western economic institutions, and iirc quite a limited set of questions)... We may look at Evergrande, but you can turn around and point at 2008. We may cite corruption in medical procurement, but, well have a look at the UK government in mid 2020 (or indeed just the entire US healthcare system). Her book is called China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, and that is the effective comparison - did rampant exchange corruption destroy the US in late 19th century? No, and the same may well apply to China.
e2a: there are also various articles available of course, just search her name. And I think she was on the Sinica podcast a while back.
e2aa: I rewatched the lecture, it's well worth it, and the following questions.
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The US never went to war with the Soviet Union and aren't interested in getting properly involved in Russia/Ukraine either. What makes you think it's different with China?
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