Chinese Economics Thread
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Answer this genius: was your country's Covid-19 policy politics-driven or science and health based driven? Given the catastrophic deaths and continues effects of long Covid-19 that according to studies in the west have prevented millions of workers from going back to work how can you confidently type and expressed the drivel you just wrote?
In what comparable country and context can you even compare China or have that country's political decision maker ought to based their Covid-19 policy from that would produce the very difficult balance of economic stability, low cases of Covid-19 and low fatalities?
It irks me to no end that people who don't even live in that country seem to always insist that China copies the destructive policies of the west even though that very policy has been proven to be disastrous. It's dumb and frankly speaking speaks of the said writer's political leanings and intentions more so than what it's been alleged against the Chinese government.
Because western countries esp. the US are embarrassed to high heaven of their own Covid response, so the more countries do the same thing the less bad it looks for them
I've posted this theory before, but I'll elaborate. I think China's zero covid policy is mainly politically driven. It's to apply economic pressure on the west, and is the early stages of decoupling.
Right now the west needs China to reopen fully. Western nations need Chinese markets and in particular Chinese exporters to resume full production in order for them to have better economic growth.
What is the incentive to China to do this? We're increasingly coming to the point where the only thing the west can export to China is their own currency. China already has trillions of dollars worth of assets in the west. Any surplus dollars will just end up sitting in a bank in America waiting to be sanctioned for whatever hoax the neocons will pull off.
Exactly what is the point in getting Chinese workers to work their arses off to feed American and European consumer demand? It's fake economic growth.
The endgame would be to insist on yuan for payment, which would limit exports from China to whatever the west can export to China. Africa and Asia would be fine as they mostly export commodities to China, but most of the west would be in big trouble apart from Australia and America.
They need to mark up the RMB, and then insist on RMB payment.
Like you said zero covid is politically driven, but so is mRNA vaccine. They are just waiting for local Chinese mRNA vaccines.
Sure there is slowdown in China. Everyone not living under a rock knows about it. But without knowing how much the CO2 emission drop was due to NEVs replacing ICEs on roads and the added renewable powers, it's meaningless to correlate it with the slowdown.
The FT piece is paywalled so I don't know how they got the data. I doubt that a foreign institute can have accurate tally of China's emissiion. IIUC, often the total emission is estimated from the economic stats, not the other way around. As China pushing forward its ambitious emission deduction effort, its average emission per GDP unit change everyday. It must be difficult for foreigners to keep up.
The doomsayers used to take drop of total electric power consumption, one of the Li Keqiang index, as a sign of China collapsing. Turns out that they ignored the energy efficiency improvements in China's economy, in particular as its manufacturing sectors climbing up the value chain quickly.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Look at how desperate the West is for China to end its zero-tolerance policy. What ever happened to decoupling from China...? Is it decoupling under their terms? It's pathetic when I read in the Western media about how China is suffering from supply chain issues like in the West. China is where most of their supplies come from. The West has to lie how China is suffering as much and even more than they are because they're afraid their own people will see China coming out better than the West meaning their citizens might change their system. The ones that control and benefits most from the system they have now don't want it to change because they won't be the primary benefactors anymore. Even with nature they have to paint China as worse like with heat waves. Why? Because they have to spin how horribly they been handling it by making it look China is handling it worse so that their system doesn't look as bad.
The US needs Saudi Arabia because of its influence in the world oil supply hence why they'll ignore human rights abuses. Just look at Hillary Clinton sucking up to them. What does China have? China is powerful because it has a growing large commercial market. Something the US can't exert influence without violating human rights. Don't believe ever that the West's objective was to isolate China while the rest of the world moved-on. That was just a tactic to make China surrender so they could have that influence. They don't like China as an alternative for the world to them. The West doesn't have that power to turn countries to side with them because they don't have the money to bribe everyone to side with them. Without the Chinese market, they have less money not more. The West hides that fact because they want the world to believe it's their culture and lifestyle that appeals to the world not just because that use to have the money therefore power in the world that what really motivated countries to them. What they had is dwindling hence why they're lying even more.
If China's zero-tolerance policy is destroying China's economy, why is Beijing sticking to it? The West said China had to maintain a 6% yearly growth or there will be civil disobedience in China because the economy isn't creating the jobs. Where are the riots since China has already sunk below that threshold? What about how they claim college graduates in China aren't finding jobs or how its tech giants are laying off people? China should be chaos according to them. Don't be surprised that everything they're saying of China is a mirror of what's going on the West but worse because it's all about believing they have a superior system and if their own citizens don't see that, that's when changing the status quo happens which in turn means those that benefit the most the way it is now lose it. It's more likely to happen in a democracy hence why they're in panic and desperate to resort to lying.
The US needs Saudi Arabia because of its influence in the world oil supply hence why they'll ignore human rights abuses. Just look at Hillary Clinton sucking up to them. What does China have? China is powerful because it has a growing large commercial market. Something the US can't exert influence without violating human rights. Don't believe ever that the West's objective was to isolate China while the rest of the world moved-on. That was just a tactic to make China surrender so they could have that influence. They don't like China as an alternative for the world to them. The West doesn't have that power to turn countries to side with them because they don't have the money to bribe everyone to side with them. Without the Chinese market, they have less money not more. The West hides that fact because they want the world to believe it's their culture and lifestyle that appeals to the world not just because that use to have the money therefore power in the world that what really motivated countries to them. What they had is dwindling hence why they're lying even more.
If China's zero-tolerance policy is destroying China's economy, why is Beijing sticking to it? The West said China had to maintain a 6% yearly growth or there will be civil disobedience in China because the economy isn't creating the jobs. Where are the riots since China has already sunk below that threshold? What about how they claim college graduates in China aren't finding jobs or how its tech giants are laying off people? China should be chaos according to them. Don't be surprised that everything they're saying of China is a mirror of what's going on the West but worse because it's all about believing they have a superior system and if their own citizens don't see that, that's when changing the status quo happens which in turn means those that benefit the most the way it is now lose it. It's more likely to happen in a democracy hence why they're in panic and desperate to resort to lying.
The whole premise of replacing ICEs with NEVs is pretty small in the grand scheme of things in relation to emissions, LCA points to 5+ years before they breakeven in terms of emissions in comparison to a ICE vehicle, after which you would get a positive return. Most EVs in China is manufactured in the last 5 years or so, so it wouldn't contribute to a drop in emission, even if we were to consider civilian vehicle emission which is dwarfed by industrial and transportation emission. Most likely culprit to the emission drop is probably what everyone expected and lockdown related, lower level of inter-province transport due to disruptions, slow down of construction sector. For example the production of concrete constitute something like 10% of global emissions and China takes the lions share of that.
Not that I'm critical of the lockdown policies, but there are social and economical costs to such policies, as the other extreme has found out causing widespread recession, it really is just different levels of bad.