Chinese Economics Thread

[gelgoog]

The talk about making a separate capital not to be subject to local interests, to me, is bunk. Typically the countries with separate capitals are among the most corrupt of all. The political class gets so totally separated from the actual economic activity of the country they live in a bubble and get easily influenced with little concern for how most people live their own lives. Brazil is a good example of this. The US even has institutionalized lobbying (legalized corruption) and local lobby group offices in the capital. Putting the capital in the geographical center is also nonsense. At best you might make a point for putting it in the center of the population distribution I think.
You might claim that government offices are always a drain on capital, but putting them in the middle of nowhere and requiring a lot of extra facilities which would not be required and would be shared otherwise (schools, hospitals, etc) increases the drag even more.

 

[krautmeister]

The talk about making a separate capital not to be subject to local interests, to me, is bunk. Typically the countries with separate capitals are among the most corrupt of all. The political class gets so totally separated from the actual economic activity of the country they live in a bubble and get easily influenced with little concern for how most people live their own lives. Brazil is a good example of this. The US even has institutionalized lobbying (legalized corruption) and local lobby group offices in the capital. Putting the capital in the geographical center is also nonsense. At best you might make a point for putting it in the center of the population distribution I think.
You might claim that government offices are always a drain on capital, but putting them in the middle of nowhere and requiring a lot of extra facilities which would not be required and would be shared otherwise (schools, hospitals, etc) increases the drag even more.

Imo, the future projections of the Beijing-Tianjin corridor probably showed an unacceptable strain on regional resources. Unlike other large urban areas in China, Beijing has more stringent construction standards to limit population density. This encourages urban sprawl which exacerbates traffic, per capita water consumption and overall costs and efficiency. My feeling is the planners set overall cost & efficiency thresholds which would be passed sometime in the future unless large portions of government functions weren't relocated elsewhere. This might be the lenses through which Xiong'an was planned. Otherwise, the only other obvious reason would be to create a symbol for China to represent the government and country.

 

[Orthan]

I think most of the really big tech companies in China are founded and "manage" daily by Chinese but are actually majority owned by foreign funds.

I wasnt aware of that. Can you give examples?

 

[daifo]

I wasnt aware of that. Can you give examples?

tencent and alibaba , if you look at the large stock holders... they are usually foreign banks and funds. The reason is that they were the initial investors and also the west had all the money to buy the stocks when they IPO or thru the open market. Now that Chinese citizens have capital, they can do the same to whatever new company that is coming out.

 

[krautmeister]

tencent and alibaba , if you look at the large stock holders... they are usually foreign banks and funds

Fun fact, Tencent was originally 46.5% owned by Naspers of South Africa, and now down to 28.9% owned indirectly by their Dutch subsidiary, Prosus.

 

[gelgoog]

Yeah. I always laugh when they say all Chinese companies are CCP funded. Alibaba was funded with foreign investor capital for example.
I am mean, Goldman Sachs, do you get more Western moneyed elite than that?

 

[Tyler]

Any update on the Xiong'an project?

Part of me wishes they cancelled the project. A Beijing-Langfang-Tianjin corridor just makes more sense, it's the best plan transport-wise and connects directly to a megaport.

The project makes a lot of sense and the benefit is big.

 

[Tyler]

I think this is a major failed idea. All the countries which have these purpose built cities for the seat of government, like the US, Australia, Brazil, etc these cities are a major failure, they are a huge money hole with artificial economies which need to be propped up leeching resources from the rest of the country. Putting the capital in one of the largest cities available just plain makes sense.

I agree that they would have been better off increasing the links and rate of urbanization in the northern cities close to Beijing and Beijing itself.



In the short term this might cause disruptions but in the long term the unified natural gas network will enable shifting gas between Chinese regions more easily. This will further increase the rate of adoption on natural gas. This is important to drive down pollution in urban areas.



The Japanese are world's largest importer of LNG. After they shut the nuclear reactors down their economy is highly dependent on the import of fossil fuels. For example the world's largest nuclear power generating site in the world is in Japan and it is currently shut down. That is likely why Nikkei focus this much on LNG news from China.

China is way bigger than Japan is most types of energy consumption. They are still fantasizing about their importance.

 

[sndef888]

But the land around the trains station on the Beijing-Langfang-Tianjin corridor is already congested and developed?

Xiong'an looks like it will be on the future Beijing-Shenzhen high speed railway line.

Chains of dense Chinese cities should follow the railway lines

Not really, between Beijing and Langfang and Langfang and Tianjin there are still fairly large plots of empty land, around 20-40km in width.

It is still much more empty than the guangzhou delta and they could easily fit 2 more xiong'ans in the corridor. Just look at Wuqing for example, one side of the HSR is totally undeveloped. Heck, they could have just rebranded the under-construction Binhai into the satellite capital.

 

[AndrewS]

Not really, between Beijing and Langfang and Langfang and Tianjin there are still fairly large plots of empty land, around 20-40km in width.

It is still much more empty than the guangzhou delta and they could easily fit 2 more xiong'ans in the corridor. Just look at Wuqing for example, one side of the HSR is totally undeveloped. Heck, they could have just rebranded the under-construction Binhai into the satellite capital.

I suspect water is an issue.
There's little spare water on the Beijing-Langfang-Tianjin corridor.

But you can see Xiong'An is next to lakes and reservoirs