Chinese Economics Thread

[Dolcevita]

Massive recovery in Travelling ..

China's tourism market experienced a remarkable surge during the first 3 quarters of 2023. Domestic tourism recorded 3.67 billion visits and a staggering revenue of 3.7 trillion yuan ($520.47 billion) during the period, up 75% YOY and 114% YOY, respectively. Ministry has announced..

Argh! Just when I wanted to travel to China. Guess I need to find an off-season gap or just skip the touristy atttractions.

 

[Feima]

China's deflation headlines have been constantly on the West media. I don't believe China wants to fix this deflation. They probably played a role by getting to this point. In the past, I've said that deflation is great because it helps boost the exports. The West cannot resist buying products at low price. More exports more jobs.

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I remember about 3-4 years ago, on a Chinese forum (that's now shut down) paid shills were gloating that rising pork prices would cause the common folk to rise up and overthrow the CCP.

Data would show whether current falling pork prices is just them coming back to their historical levels.

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- "prices doubled"

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[ougoah]

I remember about 3-4 years ago, on a Chinese forum (that's now shut down) paid shills were gloating that rising pork prices would cause the common folk to rise up and overthrow the CCP.

Data would show whether current falling pork prices is just them coming back to their historical levels.

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- "prices doubled"

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Due to an American pig disease. Possibly even intentionally weaponised by the US and spread on purpose in Chinese agricultural pig populations as part of hybrid war. The first time this occurred in the mid 2000s IIRC. Second time the US (I'm alleging) attempted to wipe out China's pig population with the same virus was during the 2018 period if memory serves. Did massive damage to China's agricultural industry and Chinese farmers had to kill off more than half the pig population to stop the spread.

I don't recall the details, perhaps another member can offer the name of the pathogen that was used by the US. I claim it is potentially an attempt at hybrid war because the pathogen was American. Could have simply been an organic occurrence though.

 

[Zhong"Geodaddy"Li]

Due to an American pig disease. Possibly even intentionally weaponised by the US and spread on purpose in Chinese agricultural pig populations as part of hybrid war. The first time this occurred in the mid 2000s IIRC. Second time the US (I'm alleging) attempted to wipe out China's pig population with the same virus was during the 2018 period if memory serves. Did massive damage to China's agricultural industry and Chinese farmers had to kill off more than half the pig population to stop the spread.

I don't recall the details, perhaps another member can offer the name of the pathogen that was used by the US. I claim it is potentially an attempt at hybrid war because the pathogen was American. Could have simply been an organic occurrence though.

African swine fever.

 

[Serb]

China has around 10 times more high-tech exports than the US yearly and they are also way more diverse (important for national security). This is from the Hamilton Index this year (total output domestic + exports):

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1735201990316376426

My opinion on why the US is leading in the pharmaceutical industry is the following; Because corporations, including pharmaceutical ones, run the government in the US, they set up favorable conditions for their industry, unlike in China (where they are fairly suppressed).

And because the US is objectively way sicker society than China, so, of course, they are going to develop a more advanced pharmaceutical industry overall than China which will eventually lead to stronger exports abroad. China doesn't need that many drugs, because they are not as sick, and the governments aren't assisting mega-corporations for their people to become addicted zombies with destroyed livers.

Meanwhile, China which has a much better culture and system regarding medical prevention, and a much better healthcare system, of course, won't have that much need for drugs. And of course, like all industries, their pharmaceutical industry is dependent also on bulk chemicals coming from China, the highest chemical-producing of various kinds country in the world.

Going to transportation (ex. motor vehicles), the bulk of this will probably come from the US's stronger aircraft manufacturing industry. But you need to see the fundamental reason for this once again. For China, due to its geography and population distribution, it was simply way more beneficial to develop the high-speed rail industry first than the aircraft industry (the US way more sparsely populated country).

And finally regarding the US lead in IT, that is probably due to "bullshit" IT like games, apps, service-based economy, etc. Meanwhile, China IT's primary focus is probably on manufacturing, production, etc. Therefore, the US actually leads in nothing of any serious significance.

Also, China might not export as much as some of the Western countries, regarding laboratory/medical equipment, or some specialized machinery for example. But that's because they are growing 5%, the biggest sci-tech growth in history, so of course they are going to sell domestically a large chunk of their production which will lead to some Western countries having higher exports globally (because domestically they are stagnating overall).



The lead for China is just widening if we look at the ASPI tracker of emerging and critical technologies (these technologies will lead to the next generation of high-tech products), (same lead also in WIPO patents, high-quality research, education metrics before that, etc, a complete chain):

 

[Serb]

80% of the US GDP is services, and 50% of the Chinese GDP is services. But the real estate sector is also a part of services, and if it's let's say 30% in China, then the remaining 20% are other services.

In the US real estate is around 15%, the rest are other kinds of services (government bureaucracy, financial engineering, bad healthcare, useless law procedures, reselling of foreign goods in retail chains, YouTubers, influencers, dog-walkers, etc).

But, they are very different cases (logic behind the real estate development). China's real estate sector is all about urbanizing 10 million more people a year, and at least from 65% currently to 90% in the future. They urbanize the area of Los Angeles yearly.

So, Chinese spending on real estate will generate returns on the GDP long term, and the US won't.

It makes sense for China to go partially into debt to raise the real estate sector first.

Once people go into cities, what awaits them is better education, and higher-value-added jobs, which will boost GDP in the future.

You can't build a world-class university a world-class sci-tech zone, or a factory plant in some kind of village, who will go to live there?

It's way easier also to expand already existing infrastructure in cities than to build entirely new ones in rural areas. It gets done way faster, and cheaper, better risk-to-reward ratio, efficiency, etc.

So, urbanization is the cornerstone of education, science, and technological improvement of the Chinese state, and the number one goal.

Real estate spending in the US is just some kind of vanity purchase because they are already urbanized to the maximum level.

I speculate that the Chinese started lowering the real estate industry (good for long-term growth) in favor of short-term sci-tech improvement (giving more money and resources to already existing bases) because they see that a clash against the US will happen in the next few years, so they should work with what they already got to be maximum prepared at that time than to go full on the old, long-term growth approaches.

 

[horse]

Excellent posts mister Serb.

Dug out an old graphic picture. Forget where I got it from. That is the plan.

Then the Americans would scream commie! When they have no plan, and are too busy checking underneath their beds.

 

[AF-1]

Also agree with everything that my Serbian pal wrote, just gonna add few more details.
The major hype in western MSM is overinvestment and overconstruction in China, like as they say ``ghost towns`` infrastructure (road, rail) that leads from nowhere to nowhere... and similar bollocks.
Real estate and infrastructure investments are ahead of urbanization pace, but that is highly justified and desirable by many reasons:
- Using cheaper labor, material, energy at the moment, to build as much as possible real estate and infrastructure, because construction costs in the future will be much higher (see the US, they are struggling to construct anything, even to maintain existing staff coz of overpriced costs of everything, like even minor stadium refurbishments costs half a billion of dollars lol).
- Using availability of construction materials, energy (oil, iron ore...) sensitive to geopolitical competition, that might be unavailable, or less available with much higher prices any time in the future.

 

[sunnymaxi]

China has around 10 times more high-tech exports than the US yearly and they are also way more diverse (important for national security). This is from the Hamilton Index this year (total output domestic + exports):

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1735201990316376426

My opinion on why the US is leading in the pharmaceutical industry is the following; Because corporations, including pharmaceutical ones, run the government in the US, they set up favorable conditions for their industry, unlike in China (where they are fairly suppressed).

And because the US is objectively way sicker society than China, so, of course, they are going to develop a more advanced pharmaceutical industry overall than China which will eventually lead to stronger exports abroad. China doesn't need that many drugs, because they are not as sick, and the governments aren't assisting mega-corporations for their people to become addicted zombies with destroyed livers.

Meanwhile, China which has a much better culture and system regarding medical prevention, and a much better healthcare system, of course, won't have that much need for drugs. And of course, like all industries, their pharmaceutical industry is dependent also on bulk chemicals coming from China, the highest chemical-producing of various kinds country in the world.

Going to transportation (ex. motor vehicles), the bulk of this will probably come from the US's stronger aircraft manufacturing industry. But you need to see the fundamental reason for this once again. For China, due to its geography and population distribution, it was simply way more beneficial to develop the high-speed rail industry first than the aircraft industry (the US way more sparsely populated country).

And finally regarding the US lead in IT, that is probably due to "bullshit" IT like games, apps, service-based economy, etc. Meanwhile, China IT's primary focus is probably on manufacturing, production, etc. Therefore, the US actually leads in nothing of any serious significance.

Also, China might not export as much as some of the Western countries, regarding laboratory/medical equipment, or some specialized machinery for example. But that's because they are growing 5%, the biggest sci-tech growth in history, so of course they are going to sell domestically a large chunk of their production which will lead to some Western countries having higher exports globally (because domestically they are stagnating overall).



The lead for China is just widening if we look at the ASPI tracker of emerging and critical technologies (these technologies will lead to the next generation of high-tech products), (same lead also in WIPO patents, high-quality research, education metrics before that, etc, a complete chain):

just one correction bro ..

this Hamilton report is upto 2020 .. so if we have 2023 data. then remaining three field in which US was leading player, China should have very close especially in High end medical devices and pharmaceutical now..

for example. as of 2022, China has 34.8 percent global share in Electronics.



by 2030, China will become a world class manufacturer in civil aviation industry too.

 

[donjasjit]

China has around 10 times more high-tech exports than the US yearly and they are also way more diverse (important for national security). This is from the Hamilton Index this year (total output domestic + exports):

My opinion on why the US is leading in the pharmaceutical industry is the following; Because corporations, including pharmaceutical ones, run the government in the US, they set up favorable conditions for their industry, unlike in China (where they are fairly suppressed).

And because the US is objectively way sicker society than China, so, of course, they are going to develop a more advanced pharmaceutical industry overall than China which will eventually lead to stronger exports abroad. China doesn't need that many drugs, because they are not as sick, and the governments aren't assisting mega-corporations for their people to become addicted zombies with destroyed livers.

Meanwhile, China which has a much better culture and system regarding medical prevention, and a much better healthcare system, of course, won't have that much need for drugs. And of course, like all industries, their pharmaceutical industry is dependent also on bulk chemicals coming from China, the highest chemical-producing of various kinds country in the world.

Going to transportation (ex. motor vehicles), the bulk of this will probably come from the US's stronger aircraft manufacturing industry. But you need to see the fundamental reason for this once again. For China, due to its geography and population distribution, it was simply way more beneficial to develop the high-speed rail industry first than the aircraft industry (the US way more sparsely populated country).

And finally regarding the US lead in IT, that is probably due to "bullshit" IT like games, apps, service-based economy, etc. Meanwhile, China IT's primary focus is probably on manufacturing, production, etc. Therefore, the US actually leads in nothing of any serious significance.

Your data is very well put but your explanation as to why China trails in IT, transportation and pharma is not so good.
In reality, Pharma- US leads because medicine is a priority sector. This sector attracts the best talent and get huge infusion of funds. It is substantially more than in China or Europe. Your logic about health in the two countries is not credible.
Transportation- As you surmised USA leads because of its aircraft industry. This is one the hardest sectors to break into both technically and financially. Even China’s indigenous jet C919 has lots of foreign parts.

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China trails in transportation not because of demand, since there is sufficient demand.

Similarly, in IT China lags at present but not due US lead in ‘bullshit” services.

China’s top officials already know of these shortcomings and new funds and talent are being channeled into these sectors to catch up. By 2030, US lead in these sectors could be wiped out.