All this is good for the long-term health and growth of the Chinese economy and people's living standards
Chinese Economics Thread
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All this is good for the long-term health and growth of the Chinese economy and people's living standards
A lot of the things were long overdue - 996, skyrocketing apartment prices, debt-driven local development, the heavy financial burden on the families to "properly" raise their children, giant monopolies that stifle competition & innovation, etc. Addressing them is healthy for the economy, the only problem I have is with the online gaming restrictions - they are frankly pretty dumb and detached from reality (you have to have at least some age-based ceilings rather than everyone under-18), instead of blanket targeting the online games, they should have targeted the money-milking through loot boxes and genres like gacha. Just like they did not blanket ban the idol industry but limited some of the toxic behavior like gathering money to bulk "buy" (without ever getting the items they paid for, merely for raising numbers in the chart ranking) albums and shit.
The property regulations - the proposed investment tax and incentives for good teachers to disaggregate from select schools - are going to cause a short-term economic slowdown but overall, it stops the bubble from growing and potentially rupturing the whole economy when it blows up. It should have been done even earlier but better late than never, propping it up indefinitely is not a good option.
Monopolies and debt are nuff said, these things are always harmful both short- and long-term. The 996 practice is from the same opera - it causes "burnouts" in the workforce and is generally a less productive approach to intellectual work, it also drastically decreases the desire to work in the said part of the economy: not a lot of people are ready to sacrifice everything for an additional penny. The financial burden to raise children is a similar story - unhealthy competition between the parents causes children to miss out on their childhood and leads to them being constantly under stress due to studying non-stop, there is always a need for balance, otherwise, you will end up with a sick population that has burned themselves out in their youth due to huge amount of stress in school, university and work. I think the slowdown of Chinese productivity growth is connected with this phenomenon, as well as the falling birth rates. I wager that solving the two issues above is going to have a much larger positive effect on the birth rates than simply removing the limits, lol.
That being said, if they just stop at the current point, then a lot of these regulations will not produce desired effect - especially the tutoring regulations. You have to reform the education structure and examination itself in order to not create an overly competitive environment. Similarly, in order to slow the growth of future real estate bubbles, there is a need to financially educate the population about portfolio diversification, stock and bond markets so that they would not pour all the saved money into real estate as the only viable inflation-proof path.
Overall, I don't see the current regulations as harmful, they just started addressing the issues that stockpiled over time and were not properly solved. In fact, I like that they finally started doing something about all those things. They could keep rolling without doing anything and showing off the big GDP growth numbers but in the end, it would lead to a disastrous outcome.
Cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cybersecurity, big data, 5G, and supercomputers.
Regarding tutoring, the crackdown was a godsend, as there was corrupt shit going on, and most large tutoring firms in China were funded by US investors, meaning China's primary and secondary education systems would swift from schools to tutoring, where the US would control the latter. Papa Xi basically said - no one fucks with China's education, otherwise I fuck you...
Papa and his crew have the smarts and balls to fix other sectors, and are doing so. Expect the west to continue to bitch and cry... with Soros being the latest to foam at the mouth.
Tencent is garbage. They are so big but they still have not released a AAA Singleplayer game in the world to promote Chinese culture. They are worse than grabage. All they do is trash lootbox mobile games.
If this pushes them to do make good games which also boost China's soft power then thats a bonus
I'm fine with the blanket restrictions on video games for under-18s
I see far too many Chinese students (in the UK) who are socially inept, partly because they spend too much time playing video games.
And from a brain neurochemistry point of view, it's better to replace the dopamine hits from video games with serotonin/oxytocin from human interaction and physical activity.
I don't like the harshness of some of the latest moves on the private sector (China's growth engine since 1978) and fear far more to come, but the most important issue facing China by far is the demographic crisis, this issue alone outweighs all other issues. Xi's changes in China's birth policy can help on this. Therefore, I actually approve of Xi more than I did last year. However, much more is needed, including bringing down housing prices to reasonable levels, removing the financial burden to having children, providing large welfare, tax, and employment benefits to families with more children, improving affordable childcare availability, and making the education system more equitable and less competitive.
You guys have to understand one thing: profit/economic growth is not the priority in the current geopolitical climate. Stuff like food, metal ore, and fuel are the only reliable currency as the global economic engine is about to blow. Only idiots still concern over numbers on a spreadsheet.
I understand the need to reduce video game addiction among teenagers. However, if China has video game addiction problem, so does South Korea, Japan, and the United States. It does not seem like video games are destroying the livelihoods of Americans, Koreans, and Japanese en mass like heroine or cocaine. Plus gaming revenues are what allow Tencent and NetEase to reinvest in other sources of R&D.
As with the tutors crackdown, this is one area in which I am very confused. China has a meritocratic tradition that goes back to the Tang and Song Dynasties. Paying hundreds and thousands for exams are things parents from every generations of Chinese have longed wanted to do. It is what makes Chinese meritocracy competitive and ensures only the best of the best get to join the civil service, so decisions-makers are surrounded by extremely smart people as opposed to party politics. However, one thing I do support is breaking the monopolies of tutoring giants, so individuals tutors/teachers (folks who really work their butts off to train new students) get to keep most of the profits for themselves as opposed to kept by 新东方 and others.
Game companies actually only get a fairly small share of profit from children. Ten cent earns like 3% of online gaming revenue from people under 18.