Was that not what was done with the digital yuan rollout trials? Everyone who participated got free money so they could test the payment system. I expect once it goes nationwide they’ll do the same thing with an incentive to get a digital wallet.
Chinese Economics Thread
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From the language of recent Xi Jinping politburo statement at CEWC, it seems the priority has shifted to a modern industrial systems, a further modernization for future industries and technologies, which is a code word for national security, and rural revitalization and agriculture, ie, production side adjustments, as a potential receptacle for construction workers since they need to go somewhere given the RE slowdown. But consumption is also given a spot in there, but it seems just to maintain stability, a healthy optimum consumption given the changing technologies and industries, but not major expansion.
We'll see more details in 2 sessions, but it seems China won't be pursuing high growth, but quality, equitable, sustainable growth by all indications. And laying the infrastructure for next generation technologies and productions.
"Unadjusted for inflation" kek.
Even if US is growing 1 or 2% faster, there is still a signficant gap they need to cover, plus 5% of China is more in absolute terms than 6% of USA. Ofc since it's unadjusted for inflation, they aren't even doing that.
Cannot help but remember the classic jai hind bragging: "we grow by 8% when China only grows by 6%", yeah but because China is also 3 times larger, that 6% is a lot more, and the gap has actually widened. Tho at least uncle jai's growth was adjusted for inflation.
Even if US is growing 1 or 2% faster, there is still a signficant gap they need to cover, plus 5% of China is more in absolute terms than 6% of USA. Ofc since it's unadjusted for inflation, they aren't even doing that.
Cannot help but remember the classic jai hind bragging: "we grow by 8% when China only grows by 6%", yeah but because China is also 3 times larger, that 6% is a lot more, and the gap has actually widened. Tho at least uncle jai's growth was adjusted for inflation.
A comments on the opening paragraph.
They can't really say that US military spending is more than the next 10 countries combined. The internal Pentagon estimate being publicly reported to the Senate is China "spending" the equivalent of $700 Bn in the USA.
That Chinese military "spending" of $700 Bn is almost the $800-900 Bn figure that the US spends. And I would expect China to be spending more than the US in the next 5 years or so.
This is the most interesting finding not mentioned here. It really confirmed how the US can have 12% of the world's manufacturing share, despite only 11% of their GDP being manufacturing, 6% of majors being engineers, and a 1T$ trade deficit. It is because they are mostly assemblers of Chinese (and coming from other countries) parts. Also gone another cope how China can't do without the Murican market.
China has 160% of the US GDP PPP already if you count accounting differences between how these two countries measure GDP (also nominal higher).
More than double the electricity generation than the US. 10 times the steel production of the US, 10 times more high-tech exports.
China has 10 times STEM bachelors and doctorates yearly, and builds around an entire US STEM labor pool in around 4 years nowadays.
I forgot to add, even this is probably not the right number because that is purely derived from an accounting approach differences, this does not mention how the Chinese government gives many social services to their citizens for free or cheap (for example in railways, they are priced for people from the beginning in a way that's just enough to repay interest used to build them accounting for depreciation - not to make a profit and they don't follow the income levels rising, so people are left with a huge consumer surplus, other examples are various housing subsidies, cheap community canteens for elderly, etc), which would have been completely private and "for-pay" in nature always and provided for a much higher price in the West, skewing Chinese reported GDP and supposed standards of living perception even lower against the West, a very ironic process in itself. Maybe that's also why Chinese citizens have that much space left to keep their wealth stored more in bank savings and deposits than in the West, and that's why their household consumption-to-GDP ratio is supposedly low. So, China's real economy is even bigger than it.
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This visualization uses from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the World Trade Organization to show how global export shares by value have changed over the last 150 years for some of the world’s top powers.