Chinese Economics Thread

[Michael90]

It doesn't lead to lack of jobs. Lack of jobs is what leads to this system. There's still too much competition. China is now at the top of the world league in terms of automation. Xiaomi is bragging that its new factories are almost completely empty of humans. That's great for productivity. Not so great for jobs.

It used to be the case that you could just get a job almost off the street but now that era is over. Another issue is that people's standards have risen. Young Chinese are among the most well-educated on the planet. Even if factory jobs were available, many don't want to work that life.

This is something I've noted before. The weakness of the East Asian economies is typically the service sector. It's the industrial sector which is world-class. China does have an edge over Japan or Korea in that it has frontier AI companies. But most Chinese cannot work those jobs. It's the general service sector which is still underdeveloped.

Another issue is that labour markets are bifurcated. As an example: some teacher jobs are highly protected and given huge benefits. But you could have teachers working in the same school without any such benefits and being underpaid and overworked with scant job security. Those cushy jobs are subsidised by local govts and they are fiscally unsustainable, but they still exist which is why there is such fierce competition for them.

I am not the first person to note that China is marxist in name only. Its economic system is very cutthroat. It's more akin to a nationalist-capitalist system without any elections rather than genuine communism. You don't have hundreds of billionaires in a Marxist system.

lol I don’t think anyone with a semblance of common sense can say China is a communist or Marxist county. Even Chinese leaders/authorities have long flushed that stuffs in the bins of history since Mao died. There might be mention of it by xi during his general formal speeches, but they are just a token for party slogans, nothing real there. China is as capitalist as you can get(even more than the US in many ways ).

For Asian powers weakness in service sector compared to how they excel in industries, this is so true. All the most successful Asian countries so far SouthKorea, Taiwan, Japan etc have all struggled to really build a globally competitive service sector like the West , China being the latest to join the modernization/industrialization process in east Asia hasn’t yet broken this curse as well, even tough they did better than their predecessors, still a long way to go. Will have to see this coming decade if they get this sector to really take off and match industrial sector (note that service sector is even more profitable than industrial sector) plus it will help alleviate the tough employment issues China is facing each year with a increasing number of highly educated youths (often single children) who don’t wanna be toiling the factory floors like their less educated poorer parents did . I tink it’s normal and it will only deepen even more with time, so China needs to grow this sort of quality jobs in service sector compared, industrial sector can’t absorb all this new workforce

 

[PopularScience]

lol I don’t think anyone with a semblance of common sense can say China is a communist or Marxist county. Even Chinese leaders/authorities have long flushed that stuffs in the bins of history since Mao died. There might be mention of it by xi during his general formal speeches, but they are just a token for party slogans, nothing real there. China is as capitalist as you can get(even more than the US in many ways ).

For Asian powers weakness in service sector compared to how they excel in industries, this is so true. All the most successful Asian countries so far SouthKorea, Taiwan, Japan etc have all struggled to really build a globally competitive service sector like the West , China being the latest to join the modernization/industrialization process in east Asia hasn’t yet broken this curse as well, even tough they did better than their predecessors, still a long way to go. Will have to see this coming decade if they get this sector to really take off and match industrial sector (note that service sector is even more profitable than industrial sector) plus it will help alleviate the tough employment issues China is facing each year with a increasing number of highly educated youths (often single children) who don’t wanna be toiling the factory floors like their less educated poorer parents did . I tink it’s normal and it will only deepen even more with time, so China needs to grow this sort of quality jobs in service sector compared, industrial sector can’t absorb all this new workforce

China is socialist. The famous quote, black cat and white cat.

 

[Eventine]

What exactly is the services sector you all are complaining about? Software? Finance? Law? Medicine? Entertainment? Outside of finance & law (neither of which are great examples of industries that improve national strength when practiced in the excess), China is plenty strong in services. Just because Chinese don’t have to play $10,000 for a MRI scan doesn’t mean China’s services sector isn’t better than the US’s.

 

[Wrought]

China definitely has a Marxist political economy and a political leadership that use a materialist framework to determine their form of governance, Marx never disputed that capitalism in the short term would lead to the rapid development of productive forces of an economy, even if the mode of production was based of off capitalist exploitation, and Chinese leadership definitely seem to understand this as well. And still the most foundational parts of the Chinese economy are owned and managed by the state in a way which doesn't mainly prioritize perpetually increasing profits, e.g.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2039595773122207820

Even the existence of billionaires is really conditioned on whether they can allocate capital that is in line with the goals of the government. That's why China lost several hundred billionaires in the past few years after the real estate bubble popped (and that the former billionaire head of Evergrande is detained in Shenzhen currently for fraud), a large number of those billionaires were heavily invested in real estate and the Chinese government didn't want to continue the real estate bubble as it was unsustainable and siphoned off fiscal resources from other parts of the economy that needed investment. The former billionaires didn't have much of a say in this process.

Our principle is that the Party commands the capitalists, and the capitalists must never be allowed to command the Party.

 

[sunnymaxi]

China’s high-tech industries recorded robust growth in the first quarter of 2026, with sales revenue from Jan. 1 to March 25 rising 14.6% YoY. High-tech manufacturing and services saw revenue grow 12.7% and 15.8%, respectively, during the same period, according to data released Wednesday by the State Taxation Administration.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2039938447272534491

 

[ReanFean]

What exactly is the services sector you all are complaining about? Software? Finance? Law? Medicine? Entertainment? Outside of finance & law (neither of which are great examples of industries that improve national strength when practiced in the excess), China is plenty strong in services. Just because Chinese don’t have to play $10,000 for a MRI scan doesn’t mean China’s services sector isn’t better than the US’s.

Yes they have a long way to go to rival US/western software. Not just in social media but in industrial and business software etc. China is strong in services, but mostly in the chinese market. US&Europe has a global service market

 

[Amistrophy]

Yes they have a long way to go to rival US/western software. Not just in social media but in industrial and business software etc. China is strong in services, but mostly in the chinese market. US&Europe has a global service market

go to a chinese research university and for most cases they'll be using US scientific modeling/simulation programs

 

[sunnymaxi]

go to a chinese research university and for most cases they'll be using US scientific modeling/simulation programs

in Trump's first tenure all top Chinese universities were blacklisted by the US commerce department like Harbin , Changchun , Xian Polytechnical University and many more. sanctions restricts these universities from accessing sensitive US technology, software, and commodities.

from 2019..


many tier2 universities still using US software but things are changing rapidly especially in big national research institutes. we have now our own EDA/CAD/CAE and other industrial software. COMAC is now using domestic CAE software for assembling. AECC has now self-developed simulation system for Engine designing and testing include CAE software.

 

[Tomboy]

in Trump's first tenure all top Chinese universities were blacklisted by the US commerce department like Harbin , Changchun , Xian Polytechnical University and many more. sanctions restricts these universities from accessing sensitive US technology, software, and commodities.

from 2019..
View attachment 172919

many tier2 universities still using US software but things are changing rapidly especially in big national research institutes. we have now our own EDA/CAD/CAE and other industrial software. COMAC is now using domestic CAE softwarI assembling. AECC has now self-developed simulation system for Engine designing and testing include CAE software.

I don't know about you but quite a bit of Chinese university including NEU and BUAA (Both project 985 colleges) still have atleast some instructors and students using US software such as MATLAB, AFAIK atleast for MATLAB, use is still extremely widespread despite official ban.

 

[Amistrophy]

in Trump's first tenure all top Chinese universities were blacklisted by the US commerce department like Harbin , Changchun , Xian Polytechnical University and many more. sanctions restricts these universities from accessing sensitive US technology, software, and commodities.

from 2019..
View attachment 172919

many tier2 universities still using US software but things are changing rapidly especially in big national research institutes. we have now our own EDA/CAD/CAE and other industrial software. COMAC is now using domestic CAE software for assembling. AECC has now self-developed simulation system for Engine designing and testing include CAE software.

from what I've seen personally, besides a slow replacement of office suite software, essentially all general use science software is still western (US)

this is speaking regarding 985 and top 10 schools in china.

it's difficult to switch entire software ecosystems even over years. it's basically impossible when the alternatives are poor quality, can't accept the same formats, dont have the same functions, or dont exist entirely. doubly so for general research computing(I don't doubt that very specific sim software at like national labs for narrow and very complex use cases might be tailor made or proprietary)

this doesnt even touch on it would upend industry-university fusion, and science being mostly internationalized