Chinese Economics Thread

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
China is already leading in R&D among its peers in the "middle-income" category.
People worry too much about this kind of stuff

It just takes time to let all the kinds of policies, R&D to take effect. But when they do, the economy and tech will rocket!

Like a huge ship, while it is difficult to change course, but when it does change, it carries such momentum behind that it will steamroll everything on front of it

If you only compare middle-income countries, China blows away every other country out of the water in terms of % of GDP devoted to R&D spending.

But yes, R&D spending takes some time before the results appear.
 

nugroho

Junior Member
Yes, that is because western countries have suppressed wages for decades and focused on the capital account. When I look at the thinking in this thread, where people argue that China should internationalize its financial system and liberalize it, that is exactly where this leads.

You do remember that that is what I am responding to right?

Allowing foreigners to skyrocket the cost of already stupidly expensive real estate and other Chinese investment asset is completely at odds with the current FYP's goal of boosting household consumption and wages, unless you literally verbatim follow the Anglo-Saxon approach of just telling everyone to max out their credit cards and bank credit.
If China does not internationalize its RMB, then US can still print money freely, with RMB in digital form, US printing money will slow or it will get a high inflation. The power of US is USD, which must be challenged first .
 

horse

Colonel
Registered Member
Restricting capital account has nothing to do with consumption
Yeah, I more or less agree with that, as far as China is concerned.

Restrictions on the capital account probably has nothing to do with Chinese consumers and consumption.

I don't want to sound racist, but Chinese are cheap.

Also, most Chinese live in apartment blocks, whereas Americans live in houses. You can fill the house will a lot more junk than the apartment.

Guess we can call that built in cultural reasons and structural reasons, heh, why Chinese consumption does not accelerate to American levels, but we probably should not expect that.

Chinese love to travel, maybe that goes into pushing up the consumption numbers. Education is consumption, but bit taboo to charge the poor.

China should try to develop more of an entertainment industry, have funds spent on that. But that is another structural reason in the way, the propaganda department.

At this point in China's development, very tough seeing manufacturing (factory wealths) pushing consumption up.

The best idea lately seems to be the DCEP - everyone gets $10 bucks and you must spend it by a certain time, that means instant consumption, along with fighting price deflation.

Give credit to CCP to think up something this diabolical, totally against the standard rules ... bwahahahahaha!

:D
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Yeah, I more or less agree with that, as far as China is concerned.

Restrictions on the capital account probably has nothing to do with Chinese consumers and consumption.

I don't want to sound racist, but Chinese are cheap.

Also, most Chinese live in apartment blocks, whereas Americans live in houses. You can fill the house will a lot more junk than the apartment.

Guess we can call that built in cultural reasons and structural reasons, heh, why Chinese consumption does not accelerate to American levels, but we probably should not expect that.

Chinese love to travel, maybe that goes into pushing up the consumption numbers. Education is consumption, but bit taboo to charge the poor.

China should try to develop more of an entertainment industry, have funds spent on that. But that is another structural reason in the way, the propaganda department.

At this point in China's development, very tough seeing manufacturing (factory wealths) pushing consumption up.

The best idea lately seems to be the DCEP - everyone gets $10 bucks and you must spend it by a certain time, that means instant consumption, along with fighting price deflation.

Give credit to CCP to think up something this diabolical, totally against the standard rules ... bwahahahahaha!

:D

Honestly, it would be a mistake if China based its economy on mindless materialism and consumption like the US.

And I agree that China will develop more of a utilitarian consumption mindset. I think it will be more like Germany or Japan in that regard.

That said, there are still 600 million people in China living on less than $10 per day.
So a doubling of their consumption is by no means excessive.
 

Jiang ZeminFanboy

Senior Member
Registered Member
Currently, many major routes are built, and many are still being built. If some new planned lines are seen as redundant or too unaffordable (some poorer provinces might have problems) planners can slash them.


I've seen many articles and yes, something stinks fishy. E.g. from what I see many articles there hate rails and worship airplanes. I think some people there might be graduated under Michael Pettis because I see the same dumb arguments.

Like what I said, read the whole twitter thread, total bs by Pettis.


Once Pettis was debunked at High-speed rail, he still spews this crap.

 

PUFF_DRAGON

New Member
Registered Member
I actually see technological upgrading and productivity increases as the driver of household consumption.

Think about it.

China arguably has a surplus of educated human capital.
We can also see intense competition from individuals competing for any sort of higher paying job.
That already drives individuals to choose more education, better training, to gain more experience etc etc
This is unsustainable and is literally the thesis behind Involution. South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan went down this route of not explicitly forcing wages or job benefits up and basically all their young people either left the country or they decided to drop out of society. Also, cratering birth rates.

We are already seeing the leading edges of this phenomenon with the rise of 内卷 as an intellectual concept and the rise of Chinese neets, return to agriculture advocates, etc.

There are intense and negative trickle down social effects that unglue society itself from thinking zero-sum hyper competition is sufficient to force people to work. If I were a mainland worker not on the high end of the scale, I'd be insanely worried if I knew someone who thought like you was in a PRC ministry level position.

What is lacking are those higher-value added industries and jobs which can support higher wages.

And remember there are many countries which have a high share of household consumption, but they still remain poor.
So I agree that higher levels of consumption spending are better, particularly for lower-income earners.
But a high share of household consumption does not automatically mean additional incentive for human capital to upgrade itself.

---

But in comparison, when a country has a high level of R&D spending, it should be impossible to remain poor.

China is still a middle-income country, but Chinese R&D spending is at 2.4% of GDP now
Only prosperous developed countries make it to this level of R&D spending.
In comparison, every other low-income or middle-income country is stuck at half of China's level.
And importantly, we see Chinese R&D spending still growing fast.

So what does this mean?

Chinese companies can leverage world-class technology development at a lower cost than their counterparts in Europe and the USA.
Then they can develop new technologies for less money AND find ready customers in the vast Chinese market.

So Chinese companies should be able to catchup and then compete with foreign rivals on a global basis.

Rank the countries below by % of GDP on R&D spending and then tell me if you agree with this logic.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Wrong on the first bolded point. Not everyone can enter a higher value add industry and you need to have wages for lower skill jobs like janitorial staff wages track with cost of living increases.

Additionally, while R&D may be a necessary pre-requisite for a high income society, it is not a sufficient replacement for wage increases. My position is largely in line with the CPC on this one and if you want to argue that the Chinese government is also stupid to put so much emphasis on consumer demand (i.e. household income) then be my guest.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

  • Five themes will shape the next five years: 1) China will achieve high-income status by 2025; 2) Domestic consumption will take over as the next driver of growth; 3) Innovation will reduce external vulnerabilities; 4) Climate goals will require sizeable investments; and 5) Structural reforms will benefit the development of domestic bond and equity markets.
 
Top