Chinese Economics Thread

Fedupwithlies · Jun 15, 2023

abenomics12345 said:
Okay? How does this change any of the problems that China have today? You've not answered my question about whether you believe that 20% youth unemployment is superior to 10%. Do enlighten us all. I've bet on China

Do you have significant holdings in RMB?

How f***ing difficult is it for you to understand that 1) China has a lot of opportunities and 2) China has a lot of problems can both be true?

The status of this conversation is that whenever someone reasonable raises #2 - you attack them with #1.

Wow the projection on this guy!

When faced with facts and logic, he attacks them with the financial equivalent of "well why don't you just move there".

gelgoog · Jun 15, 2023

ZeEa5KPul said:
No, it wasn't. The Soviet Union's economy was crippled from the start and it failed precisely because it didn't generate and scale technology sufficiently. It had pockets of excellence like rocketry and nuclear energy, but it was a failure overall.

The Soviets regularly came up with pretty sophisticated technological products which were then never put into mass production or sold in the commercial sector. This is just one example.

56860 · Jun 15, 2023

gelgoog said:
The Soviets regularly came up with pretty sophisticated technological products which were then never put into mass production or sold in the commercial sector. This is just one example.

There's a very, very big difference in capabilities between prototyping and mass successful commercialization. USSR were forced to import CNC machines from Japan until it collapsed. It simply lacked the private sector to be successful in many commercial goods.

gelgoog · Jun 15, 2023

56860 said:
There's a very, very big difference in capabilities between prototyping and mass successful commercialization. USSR were forced to import CNC machines from Japan until it collapsed. It simply lacked the private sector to be successful in many commercial goods.

That is a massive simplification of the Soviet tools market back then. The Soviet Union produced the simpler CNC machines which were required in mass numbers themselves, and imported a limited number of high spec CNC machines from abroad. Not just Japan but also France and other countries.

FriedRiceNSpice · Jun 15, 2023

abenomics12345 said:
Having an oversupply of STEM engineers (or to reframe the problem, an undersupply of STEM jobs resulting from them not making products that consumers want) driving DIDI/delivering Meituan is just as bad as having a shortage of STEM talent. This was a key problem in the early reform/opening up process and a problem that SOEs had to deal with. Product market fit > technically cool shit.

Do you have any data to actually suggest there is an oversupply of STEM talent? I do not think there is any is any nation in the world that has an actual oversupply of STEM talent. Having less of of a STEM shortage does not imply oversupply. There may be specific sectors where there is an oversupply of talent, but overall, and especially in the most competitive and critical fields, there is a talent shortfall.

Even if there were an oversupply, market will sort itself out. STEM wages will fall relative to other wages, and less competitive STEM labor will migrate to other fields. You pointed out an important fact - a STEM worker can easily work in the service industry or any other field that does not require as much specialized skills and experience. But a service worker is going to find it a lot more difficult to transition to a STEM field.

The average person in China sees RMB depreciating vs. the USD. Therefore, in their eyes, the USD is more valuable than RMB - you can ackshually all you want, but the average Chinese person does not see it this way. You can gripe about how they're not educated, or unaware, but 'crying abt it' doesn't change their perceptions.

China only recently advanced beyond middle income nation status. Of course it will take time for the average Chinese to reach US/Western European levels of income. There's no way to get around it. Hopefully in the future when aggregate incomes are higher in China, the average Chinese will be doing better than the average American today: living paycheck to paycheck, behind on rent, and worrying about affording healthcare.

They will go wherever they are paid the most for their services for any given unit of work, adjusted by other factors (such as the risk of getting shot or carjacked in the US vs. the risk of getting hauled into detention for using Twitter/Instagram). That *you* have a set of preferences does not mean *others* will have the same preferences. This is why STEM engineers left the country in the 1990s through the 2000s, and why a repatriation of a lot of STEM talent today is happening.

Why don't the dishwashers in China all move to the US or Western Europe then where they can earn a substantially higher nominal and real income? Labor markets are not really freely tradable across international borders. But you do point out that the fact that today, the trend is for repatriation of STEM talent despite the talent shortages and high wages in the US which implies that STEM jobs in China are economically viable and supported by market demand. Really today US just soaks up excess talent from China that were unable to be competitive for top STEM positions in China and instead settle for mediocre tech jobs in Bay Area/Seattle/New York where they quickly discover the pathetic purchasing power of their sad paper incomes when faced with the realities of living in an extremely HCOL metro in the US.

Deleted member 23272 · Jun 15, 2023

Fedupwithlies said:
Wow the projection on this guy!

When faced with facts and logic, he attacks them with the financial equivalent of "well why don't you just move there".

Tbf, from what I've been seeing @abenomics12345 is the one with the facts, while most of the counter arguments can be summed up as the problem is either not as bad as the media says it is and will go away pretty soon, or that simply European countries have the same numbers so China's fine. Well considering how its often a meme here and other diaspora nationalist forums to say Europe is in terminal collapse, I don't know why China having the same numbers as Europe is a point of comfort.

Like whatever your stance the data is there, issued by the government, for all to see, and its not a pretty picture when everyone was predicting a reopened China to leave everyone in the dust. As I said before, if you support China, sometimes it requires being honest when the picture is not so rosy.

Petrolicious88 · Jun 15, 2023

Fedupwithlies said:
Wow the projection on this guy!

When faced with facts and logic, he attacks them with the financial equivalent of "well why don't you just move there".

Have a read of his past posts. He’s provided plenty facts and data.

Fedupwithlies · Jun 15, 2023

Witchhunter12 said:
Tbf, from what I've been seeing @abenomics12345 is the one with the facts, while most of the counter arguments can be summed up as the problem is either not as bad as the media says it is and will go away pretty soon, or that simply European countries have the same numbers so China's fine. Well considering how its often a meme here and other diaspora nationalist forums to say Europe is in terminal collapse, I don't know why China having the same numbers as Europe is a point of comfort.

Like whatever your stance the data is there, issued by the government, for all to see, and its not a pretty picture when everyone was predicting a reopened China to leave everyone in the dust. As I said before, if you support China, sometimes it requires being honest when the picture is not so rosy.

Yea doomposting isn't being honest. And the numbers that you claim are the same as Europe and therefore ok/not ok aren't the whole picture.

Cherry picking data isn't presenting facts and data, lol.

FairAndUnbiased · Jun 15, 2023

Witchhunter12 said:
Tbf, from what I've been seeing @abenomics12345 is the one with the facts, while most of the counter arguments can be summed up as the problem is either not as bad as the media says it is and will go away pretty soon, or that simply European countries have the same numbers so China's fine. Well considering how its often a meme here and other diaspora nationalist forums to say Europe is in terminal collapse, I don't know why China having the same numbers as Europe is a point of comfort.

Like whatever your stance the data is there, issued by the government, for all to see, and its not a pretty picture when everyone was predicting a reopened China to leave everyone in the dust. As I said before, if you support China, sometimes it requires being honest when the picture is not so rosy.

What facts? I included public data with my claims. In contrast I didn't see any links to public data from him.

He then claimed that his points are substantiated by classified or censored data that you can only get via WeChat from someone you know that's on the inside.