Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
- Start date
Seems like I was wrong. I´m not a demographer and the diffrences between China and USA seem to be minor but what do I know.
Most of this discussion here can be falsified through quantitative methods. If we want to know if hypothesis is true one could do this with data and a SPSS and I´m sure it´s already done. This is something that could be answered easy. What you write seem plausible but what do I know.
I´m not saying that China has failed. I do not believe that something is written. This is why I avoid to say; "never". I believe that the low GDP (nominal) capita numbers might be problematic and that they need further discussion. Overall I think China do well.
As I wrote before. If GDP (nominal) per capita is a measurement of wealth - than China is poorer than Mexico. I´m not saying that wealth it´s all about GDP (nominal) per capita. There are several economic factors to be considered. I have actually been to China (Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) but I have never lived there. I´m from Sweden - a country in rapid decline. When it come to Rome. I have only visited once. The quality of accommodation has always been a disappointment in Southern Europe. I cannot really afford to live at 5 star hotels how they are so I would not know about the quality. I stay at more modest 3-4 star hotels.
One have to wonder. Why do 12-13 million Chinese live in Western countries and 10 million of them in USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? The United States alone hold 5.3 million Chinese people. In 1950 Sweden had 397 Chinese immigrants. By the end of 2022 Sweden had 43,980 immigrants - more than half of them are women. Why do Chinese come to the West? Is this because China is economically, culturally and politically developed or is it because China is a impoverished third world country? You live in white man´s land and I doubt you are a mail-order wife.
I will say that I enjoy your writings. It´s proactive instead of the self-hate that is so common among Chinese and other Asians (in particular some Asian women) in the diaspora.
When China has their own high-bypass engine and is one of the leaders in the semiconductor industry I might agree with you.
U.S. healthcare is very good for the ultra rich. The access and options you have is amazing if you are in the top 0.5%. Look at the type of concierge medicine you can obtain if you are a millionaire living in NYC of San Francisco.
For everybody else the system isn’t so good. It ranks towards the bottom in terms of cost and patient satisfactions. This is especially true when it comes to chronic diseases.
Disagree - what about the lack of access to adequate insurance with real coverage (as opposed to a 1000/yr healthcare savings account)? The lack of readily accessible basic care is how you end up with people bankrupt from an acute incident - the cumulative deleterious effect of avoiding care does not scale linearly (Delaying cancer treatment by 20% in time doesn't decrease your odds of remission by 20%).
Okay now do the same for the premature deaths of the COPD population because they couldn't afford Advair.
I mean you can cherry pick whatever statistics you want. China had higher GDP per capita than Mexico in 2022, did that materially change the relative quality of life between China and Mexico in 1 single year?
The same is true for ALL the countries you listed. ALL of them had slighy lower GDP pet capita in 2022 and slightly higher in 2023.
So was it that within the single year of 2023 all of China fell to ruin while the slums of Mexico were replaced by mansions or something???
And if the RMB appreciated by 10% and there was 5% inflation without any increase in economic activity, raising the nominal GDP per capita by 15%, does Mexico suddenly regress to mud huts and hunter gatherers?
This is an availability heuristic, middle schooler-type collection of words (because it can't even be called an argument), and your own feelings and beliefs. You need to look comprehensive distribution of tech achievements in various areas, not just 1-2 areas. It's like saying some random country is technologically weak if it doesn't have good HSR tech, EV battery tech, photovoltaics, or some random area I picked because I feel like it and am dumb to look at the whole picture or find some broad dataset.
You need comprehensive and real research statistics to evaluate this topic. You need to look at the entire picture, not just 10% of the picture. Anyways, 'arguments' like this aren't supposed to be on a forum of this quality. Even other more educated Westerners from professional research institutions admit that China is ahead of the US technology, so I don't know what are you coping with. It was already posted many times over here (you probably saw it too, but are now trolling) alongside similar things, so I won't be posting it again and wasting my time.
Last edited:
I dont think that’s very common since ~95% of people are insured
It’s not going to be particularly high; people marginally attached to the workforce who don’t have employer-sponsored health insurance don’t make a lot (since the ACA mandates health insurance for ppl employed over 35hr/wk). Inb4, I’m explaining why gdp accounting can indeed make sense on healthcare even if it is highly inequitable.
China already has a leading position in the semiconductor industry relative to 99% of countries. There simply aren't that many players after all.
If Israel and Ireland - both of which have 0 domestic leading edge fabs and 0 equipment industry - can be considered semiconductor superpowers, then what is China? China which is tied for 2nd highest global wafer capacity, has 7 nm domestic fabs and domestic equipment, does not have semiconductor industry? Huh???
How is this the case, when you have this stat for the US? Why do wealthier have better life expectancies, if not for healthcare quality?
Last edited: