Chinese Economics Thread

[gelgoog]

I think the one divide between pro West and pro China ppl here is whether you believe in the American narrative or not. Given two sides of the story, which one do you pick more often? The Americans, or the Chinese? If you accept the American narrative at face value, then all your political stances follow from that. Whereas if you accept the Chinese narrative, it could be just because you have a distrust of what Americans say. Perhaps that distrust comes from some other conflict.

Putting that aside, not even the American narrative about its own economic success is true. They have always used generous government spending, military force, covert and overt espionage, and coercion through multilateral institutions to get what they want. There is no reason to buy the PR from a nation of salesmen. Excellent salesmen, very good at what they do, but salesmen nevertheless.

That is to say, if you think Trump isn't the most American American in the world, then I don't trust your takes on anything.

Well, the US Empire is more benign than most of the Empires which preceded it. In many ways it has had a positive influence in world history. But they are going too far ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. They basically think the rest of the world is at their beck and call and Trump is just the maximum exponent of that. They built the world governance system but now that it doesn't suit them they sabotage it.
China is doing a lot of good with the Belt and Road Initiative bringing previously marginal regions of the globe into the world economy. The US not only is trying to sabotage that, they don't even improve their own infrastructure, it is an empire in obvious terminal decay. Just look at the roads in any major US city or the amount of homeless people roaming the streets. It ruins itself and attempts to drag everyone else down with it in the name of a few elites. It is time it stops having this much power and influence. The same thing happened both to the Roman and the British Empires in their terminal stages. When the rich stopped paying taxes and started fortifying their houses that's when the shit hit the fan.

I agree with you that the US is a nation of salesmen and arguably financiers. Their salesmen are top notch. Just watch all the talk about US LNG exports. When they make no sense and they have no export infrastructure. Just like its natural gas flare output it is a bunch of hot air. The US got its hands on infrastructure built by Qatari businessmen in the US to export Qatari LNG to the US, purchased it for a song, and reversed it from an import terminal to an export terminal. Now they claim they have this huge US export potential when they can neither liquefy nor transport enough gas by boat (you do need boats and ports for this) nor do they have enough gas pipelines to reach the coast either. The US can't even transport their own natural gas from wells in the middle of nowhere to their own East coast. The US East coast imports Russian LNG. That is a measure for how relevant their LNG is in the market.

 

[caudaceus]

I think the one divide between pro West and pro China ppl here is whether you believe in the American narrative or not. Given two sides of the story, which one do you pick more often? The Americans, or the Chinese? If you accept the American narrative at face value, then all your political stances follow from that. Whereas if you accept the Chinese narrative, it could be just because you have a distrust of what Americans say. Perhaps that distrust comes from some other conflict.

Putting that aside, not even the American narrative about its own economic success is true. They have always used generous government spending, military force, covert and overt espionage, and coercion through multilateral institutions to get what they want. There is no reason to buy the PR from a nation of salesmen. Excellent salesmen, very good at what they do, but salesmen nevertheless.

That is to say, if you think Trump isn't the most American American in the world, then I don't trust your takes on anything.

Personally I am kinda "distrust" the American POV. I consider them very overreaching with legislation and policy like CAATSA and Magnitsky Act. For example, I know a country that considers buying Russian military hardware mostly because they are "agnostic" that is you can use them whatever you want. The "western" military hardware, on the other hand, come with lots of constraints and sometimes even dictate what target they can use, but with CAATSA things are complicated. Even this overreach goes to civilian security hardware like flashbang and teargas.

If that country is "forced" to buy military hardware with lots of constraints and limitations to target her enemy internally and externally does not that mean that the country ceded their sovereignty?

All in all among U.S. government folks/diplomats right now, the one that I respect the most is Lighthizer. He is a trade hawk, but still, respect and wish global trade instead of tearing down global order.

 

[horse]

China losing its electronics supply chains. Disaster...

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TAIPEI --- It was a hot summer morning in Taipei when several officials from the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy, visited the top management of a major tech company, a key supplier to Apple.

It was immediately apparent that this was unlike previous courtesy visits, where U.S. officials stop in from time to time to hear what's happening in the industry. This time, they cut the chitchat and threw out a blunt question soon after they sat down: "Why aren't you moving more of your production capacity outside of China?" they asked. "Why aren't you moving faster?"

Participants described the conversation as "serious and unsettling." "We felt uneasy," said one. "They asked many questions that we didn't know if we could answer. The answers would have involved unreported strategies about ourselves and our clients." But the message was unambiguous: The U.S. government was directly appealing to his company to cut its ties to China, he said.

"I think a lot of supply chain movement in tech products has been set in motion, and it has momentum that will be hard to change."

Fake news.

 

[manqiangrexue]

I'm sorry. I seem too negative at times.

Not at all. Since you are Japanese (as evidenced by your infatuation with being liked), you are overly positive from your side.

I simply strongly think China should put more effort into seeking better relations with the West and understanding perceptions of it abroad.

That is because you have a strong misunderstanding of the West and what they are at the core. You're saying basically that you strongly think you can make a crocodile a vegetarian because in your fantasy world, that would be so nice.

I don't understand why it has to pick one fight after another all the time.

I don't understand why your reading comprehension is so poor. Everyone has told you; China picks no fights but it wins those that other countries start.

Yes, China is a big country but it's just one country. 84% of the world population is outside China and that share will only grow as China's birthrate plummets.

It's still 4x the size of the US with personal wealth growing faster than anywhere else on the planet and major emphasis on STEM education.

Having good relations with other countries in this globalized world is important, and as Xi Jinping said, the trend of globalization can't be reversed. Politics is at the root of all this. It's a too way street.

Of course it is, with countries that deserve it.

Just as the world should better understand China, China should better understand the world.

And you should better understand everyone to stop sounding so childish and ignorant.

 

[horse]

What you're doing is blaming the victim for getting robbed. At this point, either you're an useful idiot or an malicious actor.

Perhaps it is the usual basic reasons, they kind of reflective for me, hehe.

1. Sour grapes.

2. Impotence. (I know a lot about this.)

3. Fear.

 

[SPOOPYSKELETON]

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Chinese bonds more "trustworthy" than American treasuries now? Say it ain't so. China is making friends with Wall Street, a group of Americans that actually matter.

 

[horse]

I think the one divide between pro West and pro China ppl here is whether you believe in the American narrative or not. Given two sides of the story, which one do you pick more often? The Americans, or the Chinese? If you accept the American narrative at face value, then all your political stances follow from that. Whereas if you accept the Chinese narrative, it could be just because you have a distrust of what Americans say. Perhaps that distrust comes from some other conflict.

We should pick neither. We should not go with the American version. We should not go with the Chinese version.

We go with only one thing.

We go with the facts!

Seek truth from fact!

This is not just a Chairman Mao, this is a Confucian thing, going back ages.

Is that what we learn in school nowadays? Follow a narrative and pick a side, just how it works in the playground during recess playing cowboys or Indians or Monkey King and zhu bajie?

Say no to drugs! Say no to indoctrination! BLM!

Seek truth from fact.

 

[gadgetcool5]

You're right, China should just let others sanction its companies, blockage its trade, sabotage economics and technological developments, threaten regularly to bomb or blow up their cities and infrastructure (Three Gorges Dam), actively funds terrorists and seperatists inside its borders while salami slicing its disputed territory, and all the while engaging in massive propaganda info wars style against anything it does, while doing absolutely nothing, "please daddy give it to me more".

/s

China isn't the one that has crippled the WTO, WHO and other international institutions, it isn't the one that actually wants to destroy the current world order. It's the mafia boss that has set up that same globalized world orders, wrote its rules and then suddenly decided to flip the whole table the instant it realizes that it may actually have to play under those same rules, and not win all the time.

If you still can't see it, China has actually been the relatively restrained party, because it has no problem keeping the current world order if it accommodates to China. It took a couple of years before China woke up and realized that America lost its mind and hardened up.

What you're doing is blaming the victim for getting robbed. At this point, either you're an useful idiot or an malicious actor.

I never said that the US isn't doing wrong. But this isn't a one sided affair. You say China has been relatively restrained.

Is building islands and military installations on the South China Sea restrained?

Is flying more sorties over Taiwan than any time in the last 30 years restrained?

Is the ongoing border fighting with India that is the worse in 30 years, and refusal to demarcate the LAC restrained?

Is setting up an ADIZ over the East China Sea restrained?

Is making up a new border claim against Bhutan which never existed before restrained?

Is abruptly passing a HK national security law which takes away the city's freedoms restrained?

Is threatening Australia with economic punishment if it doesn't do what China wants restrained?

Is locking up 1 million Uighurs, doing genocide by forced sterilization, and making them do slave labor with no contact with their families restrained?

Are all the arrests of lawyers, increased censorship of WeChat and Weibo, arrests of academics for speaking politically incorrect, and never ending purges restrained?

Is wolf warrior diplomacy of gloating over others' coronavirus sufferings or berating them for their response restrained?

You are going to tell me that none of this is happening, or it's all justified for some reason or another. But Western propaganda is not that good. If China was being restrained then it would not be in the bad position it is in, not only via the US but via most developed countries & most of its neighbors.

The West doesn't even realize what it has done. The 1980s generation was the most anti-communist, pro-liberal, pro-foreign ideas generation China will ever have. They squandered that and are on the track to provoke China into a irrevocable enemy for generations, just because they are afraid to compete.

And what did this liberal 1980s generations achieve? Did they ever express their liberalism? How was it reflected in Chinese policies? The American people don't know which generations are liberal or conservative in China. All they can see is government policy. Since 2008, China has only become more hardline, nationalist, authoritarian and closed. It completely reversed direction from the 1980s and 1990s when it was opening up & reform.

The US never hid its expectations, fair or not. The US always openly said it expected China to gradually liberalize. You can go back to the speeches of Bill Clinton or Robert Zoellick from the 1990's and 2000's. When China liberalized and joined the international system, it became the most successful country in the world. It rose from a nation of peasant farmers to almost a middle income country in one generation. What I don't understand is why did it suddenly do a 180 degree reverse backward and is now trying to return to the days of Mao Zedong? If you are being successful, why turn around and go back to the old road where you were unsuccessful? There is no reason- it is complete stupidity out of the blue. It is as if a man who has just gotten a promotion, ideal career, ideal wife, ideal kids, one day suddenly decides to pick up a gun, point it at his own face, and pull the trigger. That is really what upsets me so. China sacrificed so many decades and so many lives for the lessons of the Deng Xiaoping era, when it finally seemed to be on the right path. But for no reason at all it is suddenly going to the wrong path again with no explanation. I don't get it. It's like Xi Jinping is some sort of CIA intelligence op out to damage China, and he somehow got elected General Secretary.

 

[manqiangrexue]

I never said that the US isn't doing wrong. But this isn't a one sided affair. You say China has been relatively restrained.

Is building islands and military installations on the South China Sea restrained?

Is flying more sorties over Taiwan than any time in the last 30 years restrained?

Is the ongoing border fighting with India that is the worse in 30 years, and refusal to demarcate the LAC restrained?

Is setting up an ADIZ over the East China Sea restrained?

Is making up a new border claim against Bhutan which never existed before restrained?

Is abruptly passing a HK national security law which takes away the city's freedoms restrained?

Is threatening Australia with economic punishment if it doesn't do what China wants restrained?

Is locking up 1 million Uighurs, doing genocide by forced sterilization, and making them do slave labor with no contact with their families restrained?

Are all the arrests of lawyers, increased censorship of WeChat and Weibo, arrests of academics for speaking politically incorrect, and never ending purges restrained?

Is wolf warrior diplomacy of gloating over others' coronavirus sufferings or berating them for their response restrained?

Half the things you mentioned are necessary for building hard power, which always trumps soft power. The other half of your "complaints" are simply because you have become brain-washed by Western propaganda to the point where you cannot be educated as you ignore education except from Gordon Chang.

You are going to tell me that none of this is happening, or it's all justified for some reason or another. But Western propaganda is not that good. If China was being restrained then it would not be in the bad position it is in, not only via the US but via most developed countries & most of its neighbors.

And what did this liberal 1980s generations achieve? Did they ever express their liberalism? How was it reflected in Chinese policies? The American people don't know which generations are liberal or conservative in China. All they can see is government policy. Since 2008, China has only become more hardline, nationalist, authoritarian and closed. It completely reversed direction from the 1980s and 1990s when it was opening up & reform.

The US never hid its expectations, fair or not. The US always openly said it expected China to gradually liberalize. You can go back to the speeches of Bill Clinton or Robert Zoellick from the 1990's and 2000's. When China liberalized and joined the international system, it became the most successful country in the world. It rose from a nation of peasant farmers to almost a middle income country in one generation. What I don't understand is why did it suddenly do a 180 degree reverse backward and is now trying to return to the days of Mao Zedong? If you are being successful, why turn around and go back to the old road where you were unsuccessful? There is no reason- it is complete stupidity out of the blue. It is as if a man who has just gotten a promotion, ideal career, ideal wife, ideal kids, one day suddenly decides to pick up a gun, point it at his own face, and pull the trigger. That is really what upsets me so. China sacrificed so many decades and so many lives for the lessons of the Deng Xiaoping era, when it finally seemed to be on the right path. But for no reason at all it is suddenly going to the wrong path again with no explanation. I don't get it. It's like Xi Jinping is some sort of CIA intelligence op out to damage China, and he somehow got elected General Secretary.

You don't get it because you don't read and you don't learn. First of all, China has never been stronger or more prosperous both directly and in comparison to the rest of the world than it is today. No one could have even imagined China to defeat COVID so soundly while all Western nations continue to struggle with it. So the entire premise of your argument, that China's actions have put it in a dire situation, is broken and stupid. If your entire argument is to explain (or ask rhetorically) why something is black, and it's actually white, you're an idiot wasting your time. Secondly, this is not for you since you cannot read or learn; it is for others who may have missed it, China changed because it cannot continue on a set path to overtake the US. Different stages take different strategies and the US is not about to let China smile, wave, and stroll past it. China changed because the US attitude to it changed and the US attitude to it changed, because China is getting too powerful for America's comfort. It does not matter what China does; Saudi Arabia can chop off all homosexuals' heads and the US doesn't care. It only cares that American power is not surpassed. Therefore, as China gets stronger, it's going to inevitably get ugly no matter what; so your desire to cower and pretend everyone's all friends is just foolish and self-defeating.

 

[SPOOPYSKELETON]

I never said that the US isn't doing wrong. But this isn't a one sided affair. You say China has been relatively restrained.

Is building islands and military installations on the South China Sea restrained?

Is flying more sorties over Taiwan than any time in the last 30 years restrained?

Is the ongoing border fighting with India that is the worse in 30 years, and refusal to demarcate the LAC restrained?

Is setting up an ADIZ over the East China Sea restrained?

Is making up a new border claim against Bhutan which never existed before restrained?

Is abruptly passing a HK national security law which takes away the city's freedoms restrained?

Is threatening Australia with economic punishment if it doesn't do what China wants restrained?

Is locking up 1 million Uighurs, doing genocide by forced sterilization, and making them do slave labor with no contact with their families restrained?

Are all the arrests of lawyers, increased censorship of WeChat and Weibo, arrests of academics for speaking politically incorrect, and never ending purges restrained?

Is wolf warrior diplomacy of gloating over others' coronavirus sufferings or berating them for their response restrained?

You are going to tell me that none of this is happening, or it's all justified for some reason or another. But Western propaganda is not that good. If China was being restrained then it would not be in the bad position it is in, not only via the US but via most developed countries & most of its neighbors.



And what did this liberal 1980s generations achieve? Did they ever express their liberalism? How was it reflected in Chinese policies? The American people don't know which generations are liberal or conservative in China. All they can see is government policy. Since 2008, China has only become more hardline, nationalist, authoritarian and closed. It completely reversed direction from the 1980s and 1990s when it was opening up & reform.

The US never hid its expectations, fair or not. The US always openly said it expected China to gradually liberalize. You can go back to the speeches of Bill Clinton or Robert Zoellick from the 1990's and 2000's. When China liberalized and joined the international system, it became the most successful country in the world. It rose from a nation of peasant farmers to almost a middle income country in one generation. What I don't understand is why did it suddenly do a 180 degree reverse backward and is now trying to return to the days of Mao Zedong? If you are being successful, why turn around and go back to the old road where you were unsuccessful? There is no reason- it is complete stupidity out of the blue. It is as if a man who has just gotten a promotion, ideal career, ideal wife, ideal kids, one day suddenly decides to pick up a gun, point it at his own face, and pull the trigger. That is really what upsets me so. China sacrificed so many decades and so many lives for the lessons of the Deng Xiaoping era, when it finally seemed to be on the right path. But for no reason at all it is suddenly going to the wrong path again with no explanation. I don't get it. It's like Xi Jinping is some sort of CIA intelligence op out to damage China, and he somehow got elected General Secretary.

Gadget, this is such an unbelievable pile of lies you have on hand here. If you want to demonstrate your commitment to helping China out, you can do worse than taking its side on even one of the various issues you listed out here. Instead, you repeat the maximalist demands of the Americans, imitating their attitudes by refusing to recognize China has legitimate national security concerns in ALL the listed issues, and that China, more often than not, is far too REACTIVE in dealing with these matters.

If you cannot even pretend there are two sides to the issue in your own mind, then it is obvious to EVERYONE here that you are speaking in bad faith.

Even the framing of the issue as "western liberalization vs LITERAL MAOISM" is deceptive, lacks nuance, and is meant to shape the debate in unfavorable terms. I see this kind of gaslighting often in the Western media, where any tiny deviation away from what is considered "acceptable" is considered to be extremely outrageous. This method, I am sure, is meant to make topics emotionally untouchable, so that no one wastes energy defending the unpopular position.

Chinese liberals like you demonstrate your unwillingness to adapt your way of thinking because you have bought the Western frame of mind completely (as demonstrated by your lack of balanced positions). It is no wonder you guys lost control of the country and the internal narrative.

My only question is, when do you wake up?

China sacrificed so many decades and so many lives for the lessons of the Deng Xiaoping era

Where did you get the idea that Deng Xiaoping wanted to seamlessly integrate into the Western world order? As the saying goes "hide your strength, bide your time". Gadget, what do you think Deng was waiting for?

Answer, he was waiting for a time when China is strong enough to retake Taiwan, Hong Kong, and be a strong, dominant player in the world stage. As is befitting an ancient civilization like China. It was not his plan to dissolve in Western Neoliberalism, to accept Washington's narrative forever. You seem confused on this issue.