Chinese Economics Thread

[broadsword]

Thank you.
I found the Clean Technica article especially enlightening. China spends 50% more and gets increases of 14 times as much installed wind power, 3.5 times as much installed solar power than the US. I wonder if "efficiency and low carbon tech/services" includes the ( very large ) investments still necessary in the power grids or whether these are left out of these statistics.

In China, the power grid infrastructure tends to be slower to bring up to speed. But it does catch up even if not completely.

 

[broadsword]

I can imagine an urbanized and semi-urbanized area in which the main roads are fitted with antennae in the road itself as now tested in a 14 kilometer bus line in South Korea where energy is delivered from those antennae to the vehicles. These vehicles need batteries or fly wheels to store energy for use of the main roads but their weight and costs can be modest. That would remove a large part of the consumption of liquid fuel in the world and would improve the air quality in such areas very significantly. I can see several further advantages as the antennae guiding the vehicles making unmanned operation easy and cheap.

That is an alternative to charging stations mooted by the Israeli company Better Place, which unfortunately has gone to a better place. In China, many people live in apartments, which makes charging difficult. Building the charging infrastructure will be very expensive. Electric cars are not selling well and the government is considering re-introducing incentives. Electric cars, without a good charging solution, will only suit people with fixed route or short driving distance.

I think PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) are the best option, not only in China but in most countries as well. BYD's PHEV Qin is selling very well. Volvo and VW are going to introduce their own. Toyota is going to bring to market hydrogen cars by the end of 2015.

 

[delft]

That is an alternative to charging stations mooted by the Israeli company Better Place, which unfortunately has gone to a better place. In China, many people live in apartments, which makes charging difficult. Building the charging infrastructure will be very expensive. Electric cars are not selling well and the government is considering re-introducing incentives. Electric cars, without a good charging solution, will only suit people with fixed route or short driving distance.

I think PHEVs (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) are the best option, not only in China but in most countries as well. BYD's PHEV Qin is selling very well. Volvo and VW are going to introduce their own. Toyota is going to bring to market hydrogen cars by the end of 2015.

I want to get rid of the liquid fuel supply infrastructure for vehicles. They take real estate, need large supply tankers, pollute the atmosphere with hydrocarbons, etc. Hydrogen is a good fuel for fast merchant ships and for airships but I don't want it for airplanes and certainly not for small scale applications like cars.

 

[broadsword]

On the subject of clean coal, this American Chinese might have the game-changing answer with coal energy without combustion.
Liang-Shih Fan

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More detail about his innovation

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And the Smithsonian has a writeup

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By the way, clean coal with combustion equiped with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) has the potential to be as clean as natural gas burning plants without CCS.

 

[ABC78]

Stereotypes are really about what people want to believe. People who usually perpetuate stereotypes are taking pride in a perception of their own individuality. Stereotypes suggest there is no individuality but based in instinct at the level of animals. They want to spread prejudice with discrimination in mind. Some don't want China to be seen as treating women better in any way because that might encourage people to follow that model. Now who would be alarmed by that? People who want everyone to follow their model even though it's not the best. Now why would that be? It's just like how China's economy is distinguished by the critics as "state capitalism." Beijing will step in to protect Chinese business and industries which is supposedly somehow bad. Is it any different from Obama stepping in to stop China from taking over solar and other green industries? Obama believed at first the US was going to control green industries therefore profit by it. Because it looked like China was going to end up being the winner, he took action. State capitalism is just a stereotype to brand and create prejudice not about what's best. It's the same with who treats women the best. Even feminists like Hillary Clinton doesn't want a foreign model leading the way for women. She's being seen as the leader of the women of the world. She won't be if someone else's model is followed.

Here's an article that kind of explains speaks this sort of feminist attitude.

Why white feminists need to lean back
The first lady’s critics miss the fact that black women have never been the model for mainstream American womanhood
Brittney Cooper

In a column at Politico last week entitled “Leaning Out: How Michelle Obama Became a Feminist Nightmare,” Michelle Cottle cast First Lady Obama as a feminist failure, declaring that though “somebody will shatter the conventional first lady mold,” it “won’t be Michelle Obama.”

My message to white feminists is simple: Lean back. Way back. And take your paws off Michelle Obama. Black women have never been the model for mainstream American womanhood, and to act as though she takes something away from the (white) feminist movement is intellectually disingenuous and historically dishonest. Your molds were never designed to contain the likes of a Michelle Obama in the first place. And feminism’s biggest nightmare isn’t Michelle Obama; it is white feminists’ consistent inability to not be racist.

Though Cottle fully acknowledges that the intersection of race and gender “puts Michelle in a treacherous spot,” she co-signs the assessment of Linda Hirschman, who argues that the FLOTUS, in terms of gender, has largely relied on “an almost music-hall-level imitation of a warm-and-fuzzy, unthreatening, bucolic female from some imaginary era from the past.”

There are many problems with this assessment. Neither Cottle nor Hirschman manages to make her assessment of Michelle Obama’s gender politics or performance while holding race constant. But it is race that shapes black women’s access to narratives of womanhood, and the protection that comes with femininity. In other words, black women were never viewed as “unthreatening and bucolic.” (Let us not forget the routine dustups that emerge whenever the first lady shows her arms or her legs in public.) That narrative has been the sole and privileged access of heterosexual, middle-class white women. And white women do not want to acknowledge that this narrative has given them a particular kind of white female privilege — such narratives about delicate and unthreatening white femininity drove the creation of the black male rapist myth and necessitated the labor of black women domestics to maintain white women’s unsullied delicacy and virtue.

Thus, they can’t rightly view Michelle Obama’s gender politics as retrograde, when the ways in which femininity is refracted and experienced through the lens of race is taken into account.

To further make her point, then, Cottle turns to the work of black feminist Keli Goff. Goff wrote a column charging Mrs. Obama to become more overtly political again, now that “she no longer has to worry about her public image as a super-strong, super-fierce black woman who might cost her husband votes.” Goff hopes that the FLOTUS will become more outspoken in calling out racism directed towards her husband, advocating for the first black women to be appointed to the Supreme Court and letting people know that she cares about more than gardening and obesity, among other things.

Now that President Obama has secured a second term, Goff wants Mrs. Obama to step fully into the role of being a race woman, in some combination of Mary McLeod Bethune, Amy Jacques Garvey and Coretta Scott King.

And this is where it becomes challenging for me. I am not here for the facile arguments from white feminists about what Michelle Obama is supposed to represent for all women. Until these mainstream white feminists really grapple with the history of racism and the ways it has shaped all of our performances of gender, then, frankly, I think they should be quiet.

I also acknowledge and agree with black feminists like Melissa Harris-Perry and Kirsten West Savali who have talked about the importance of Michelle Obama’s mom-in-chief role in countering persistent narratives about bad, delinquent black mothers.

As Savali notes, “In my feminism, we understand that raising intelligent, confident Black children in a loving family is one of the most revolutionary acts a Black woman can commit in America.”

Word.

But Savali also notes: “I enjoy the first lady’s dougie as much as the next person; but I would also love to see her use her position to say, “I have daughters and they are Renisha McBride.” I would love for her to engage in substantive conversations about depictions of Black women in the media, in addition to issues such as street harassment and sexual violence within the Black community.”

I join her in asking for more from Michelle.

For instance, last spring, Mrs. Obama gave a talk at Morgan State University in which she lamented a world in which, unlike children from prior generations, many black children today aspire to be “rappers and ballers,” rather than following other more presumably respectable pursuits. I, for one, balked at the conservatism of her analysis, and took great issue with her willingness to cast the challenges that young black students today face as a problem of motivation, rather than as a problem of failing and under-resourced schools, the deprofessionalization of teaching via programs like Teach for America, the gutting of teachers unions and the defunding of public education.

So to be honest, I find the analyses from my fellow black feminists, who stand at the ready to defend the historical and social significance of Michelle Obama’s mom-in-chief role, to be wanting. Black women have always managed to raise good families, support their husbands and have a healthy level of political critique. And when we did invoke respectability politics in the past, there was a strategy behind it. The analysis didn’t begin and end there.

I do think black feminists can wish for more from this first lady, while still being attentive to the minefield of historical and contemporary ideas that she is being forced to navigate. In doing so, we might have to acknowledge that because of President Obama’s tepid record on black issues, Michelle Obama’s choice to have his back often means she doesn’t publically have our back as we might wish. The fact that she is ride-or-die for Barack makes us love her all the more. And that struggle between supporting your man and his vision for the nation versus being the full, forceful expression of your black womanhood is a struggle that black feminists know all too well, and are uniquely poised to sit with, not uncritically, but rather in a productive space of discomfort.

Black feminists want her to show up and show out for us, because black families and black futures depend on it. And until white feminists share this kind of anti-racist agenda, then they should stop calling black women nightmares and start acknowledging their own complicity as what Lillian Smith called “Killers of the Dream.”

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[AssassinsMace]

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It amazes me how some Asian countries are building casinos solely to jump a ride on the money train of Chinese gambling yet these are also countries that want poke the dragon in the eye. I always wondered if Chinese are even turned off by how Singapore treats Chinese migrant workers the worse out of all ethnic groups. I don't know if Marina Bay Sands isn't doing so well because of it but if they're dependent on Chinese gamblers from the Mainland...

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

America and Europe has it's own Ghost Cities, And The Chinese seem to be helping empty them of people.

The Chinese take Manhattan: replace Russians as top apartment buyers

Fri, Apr 25 2014
By Michelle Conlin and Maggie Lu Yueyang
NEW YORK/SYDNEY (Reuters) - For the first time, the Chinese have become the biggest foreign buyers of apartments in Manhattan, real estate brokers estimate, taking the mantle from the Russians - whose activity has dropped off since the unrest in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against Russia by the United States.
Wealthy Chinese are pouring money into real estate in New York and some other major cities around the world, including London and Sydney, as they seek safe havens for their cash and also establish a base for their children to get an education in the West.
Reuters asked five of the top real estate brokerages for their ranking of foreign buyers in New York City. The Chinese ranked first in both volume and value of sales in all their estimates. Opinions differed on just how the Russians, Europeans and South Americans stacked up next.
There are no official figures collected on the national and ethnic backgrounds of home buyers because of U.S. fair housing laws, designed to protect against discrimination.
The Chinese interest is mainly a valuation play, real estate experts say. After the U.S. housing bust in 2007-2010, home prices in major U.S. cities fell to levels that made them attractive. While U.S. prices have been recovering, they are still appealingly low by comparison with many other parts of the world.
Many Chinese buyers are switching their interest away from markets like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore amid fears that prices have soared to frothy levels in those cities. Luxury apartments cost between $4,100 and $5,000 per square foot in Hong Kong, while in Manhattan and Sydney they cost half that, ranging from about $2,100 to $2,500, according to Knight Frank's Prime International Residential Index. London is also cheaper, at $3,300 to $4,100 per square foot.
The brokers say that many Chinese buyers are also investing abroad so they can own property near major educational institutions. Some are buying homes near top colleges — even though their children are so little they can't walk yet. More than 80 percent of wealthy Chinese want to send their children overseas to school, according to the Hurun Report, a Shanghai-based publication.
"By far and away, the Chinese are the fastest growing demographic," said Dean Jones, a U.S.-based broker with Sotheby's International. "They are the top consumer for real estate, and New York is front and center."
Added Pamela Liebman, CEO of the Corcoran Group, one of the best known New York real estate firms: "In sheer numbers, the Chinese outspend the Russians in every segment of the market."
THE RUSSIANS: "THEY'RE GONE"
In Manhattan, it wasn't long ago that Russian oligarchs dominated the gilded world of real estate, gobbling up status-heavy, marquee properties, such as an $88 million, Robert A.M. Stern-designed penthouse and a $75 million mansion with a ballroom and a rooftop aerie.
Now, many brokers say, Russian buyers have become scarce largely because of fears that the struggle over Ukraine will worsen leading to increasingly tough U.S. sanctions on politically-connected and wealthy Russians.
"They're gone, they're gone," said Sotheby's International broker Nikki Field, "They've been gone since the Crimean outbreak."
The Chinese grew to 28.5 percent of Field's international business in the first quarter of 2014, up from 19 percent last year. "We've only scratched the surface with Chinese demand," Field said.
Chinese buyers typically used to pick up properties in the $1 to $5 million range in New York, often buying two and three at a time for investment purposes, the brokers said.
But lately they have been moving up market, brokers say. The current in-vogue building among the Chinese is Central Park's One57, a new skyscraper designed by Pritzker Prize-winning French architect Christian de Portzamparc, where they can spend $18.85 million for a three-bedroom or $55 million for an apartment taking up the entire 81st floor. The building comes with all of the amenities of a five-star hotel.
The Chinese are also venturing out to Long Island, where they are buying Gatsby-esque mansions set atop rolling greens.
Broker Shawn Elliott ferries around groups of Chinese buyers in Rolls Royce and Mercedes-Benz luxury sprinters every week, often catering to entire families at a time.
"They're looking for trophy properties," said Elliott. "They're looking for their children to be comfortable, and to be near Columbia or New York University."
Some Chinese aren't even bothering to come to the United States at all, going so far as to pick up multi-million-dollar properties sight unseen.
One Chinese buyer recently purchased two properties, worth $13 million, at the Baccarat Hotels & Residences in New York. The entire deal was done via the Chinese social networking site WeChat, according to the broker who did the deal, Douglas Elliman's Emma Hao.
"I think the Chinese trend is onwards and upwards," said Liam Bailey, a partner with Knight Frank. "There will be more Chinese buyers, and they will take more share of the market."
New York isn't alone.
In Sydney, the Chinese became the top buyers of new luxury homes last year, according to sales research conducted by Knight Frank.
Shanghai businessman Wang Jiguang has already picked up two houses in another major Australian city, Melbourne, and one apartment in Sydney. "My child is going to study abroad, and we are just preparing some overseas assets for our child, which will be less risky," Wang said in a telephone interview from Shanghai.
Mainland Chinese were the top foreign investors in Australian real estate last year, according to Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board. They bought $5.9 billion worth of property, accounting for 11.4 percent of total foreign investment in real estate, FIRB said.
The data includes both residential and commercial properties. But the average value of the purchases for China is the lowest of all the countries, which suggests a large number of the deals are for residential property.
Monika Tu, a broker at top-end real estate firm Black Diamondz Property Concierge in Sydney, says that over the past year mainland Chinese have become 80 percent of her company's business.
"There is nearly no local market for top-end properties," says Tu.
That fact has made the local headlines, with some accusing the Chinese of "pricing out local buyers". In March, Australia's federal parliament announced an inquiry into foreign investment in the sector in a bid to find out whether local real estate deals are being properly policed.
In Manhattan, some locals are also starting to grumble, brokers say, about the new "China Price", a phenomenon that can see Chinese buyers sweep in and outbid other buyers, often with all-cash offers.
In London, robust property laws and British universities are a big draw for the Chinese. They became the city's number one foreign buyer last year, according to Knight Frank, accounting for 6 percent of all purchases over 1 million pounds ($1.68 million). The Russians accounted for 5.2 percent.
"The Russian buyers are a maturing market," said Bailey. "And they aren't growing anything like the Chinese buyers."
(Reporting by Michelle Conlin and Maggie Lu Yueyang; Editing by Martin Howell and Alex Richardson)

U.S., euro zone activity up; China decline slows
Photo
Wed, Apr 23 2014
By Rodrigo Campos and Jonathan Cable
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S. manufacturing sector expanded in April and the euro zone private sector started the second quarter on its strongest footing since 2011, while the pace of decline in Chinese factory activity slowed, surveys showed on Wednesday.
Factory activity continued to expand in the world's largest economy, but the pace of growth stalled and came in below expectations. However, output growth hit its fastest in three years.
Financial data firm Markit said its preliminary or "flash" U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index dipped to 55.4 in April from 55.5 in March. Economists polled by Reuters expected a reading of 56.0.
"The headline number is not bad. It's still above the 50 neutral threshold. The improvement is encouraging," said Ryan Sweet, senior economist with Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
"With this report, it suggests the manufacturing is gaining more orders and has bounced back from the bad winter weather. Manufacturers are playing catching up."
The data highlights expectations for a strong second quarter after the first one saw colder-than-average temperatures and massive snowstorms weigh on U.S. economic activity.
Earlier on Wednesday, data showed China's HSBC/Markit flash PMI for April rose to 48.3 from March's final reading of 48.0, but was still below the 50 line separating expansion from contraction.
"It's generally in line (with expectations), reflecting that growth momentum is stabilizing," said Zhou Hao, China economist at ANZ in Shanghai.
Analysts see initial signs of stabilization in the world's second-largest economy due to the government's targeted measures to underpin growth, but believe more policy support may be needed as structural reforms put additional pressures on activity.
"The long slide in China that we have seen in recent months might have turned a corner," said Peter Dixon at Commerzbank.
EURO ZONE SURPRISES
Growth in the euro zone was again led by Germany, the bloc's largest economy, where the PMI jumped from March and was just shy of February's 32-month high.
"Given the problems the euro zone faces, to get even a modest rate of positive growth this year is a good sign. But there is an increasing concern that two of the larger economies - Italy and France - are struggling to gain any traction," Commerzbank's Dixon said.
Topping expectations of all 36 economists polled by Reuters, the bloc's dominant services industry led the charge while manufacturers also had a stronger month than the median forecast had suggested.
But worryingly for policymakers, who have struggled to bring inflation up to their 2 percent target ceiling, service firms cut prices for the 29th month in a row, and did so at a steeper pace than in March.
Inflation fell to just 0.5 percent in March, its sixth straight month in what European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has called a "danger zone" below 1 percent.
Still, the strong data gave support to the euro, which was up 0.28 percent against the U.S. dollar.
"Today's figure buys the ECB a bit more time. With the recovery still on track there doesn't seem to be an urgent need for strong action, though deflationary pressures still warrant attention," Peter Vanden Houte at ING said.
Markit's flash composite PMI, widely regarded as a good gauge of growth, jumped to 54.0 in April from March's 53.1, above the 50 mark for the 10th month and chalking up its highest reading since May 2011. A Reuters poll had predicted no change.
"The PMI indicator corroborates the picture that the euro zone recovery has legs," Vanden Houte said.
Aside from Germany the rest of the bloc also performed well apart from France, where although the index held above 50 for the second month running it was down from the previous reading. The French PMI has been below the wider euro zone reading for 20 months.
(Additional reporting by Richard Leong in New York; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

 

[ABC78]

Here's a BBC documentary on China's economic rise from 2012. It really shows how the developed world never expected the Chinese to try eat their lunch. They just assumed the Chinese could never move beyond the low skilled manufacturing. The BBC's representation of the British Army's behavior in the Opium War is as bad as japan and WW2.

[video=youtube;5twlZxYzEHY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5twlZxYzEHY&list=FLm-3OAJldt4_f-JJA31cQWQ[/video]


[video=youtube;MdNwlaTa1bg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdNwlaTa1bg[/video]

 

[ABC78]

Part 3 and last part of this Documentary.

[video=youtube;MJT3Nug2RCg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJT3Nug2RCg[/video]

 

[Piotr]

Here's a BBC documentary on China's economic rise from 2012.

This "documentary" is very biased and Mr Mao Yushin from part 1 of this "documentary" is simply wrong:

More Chinese students return to find work after studying abroad
Facing a stagnant economic situation overseas, more Chinese students are returning home after studying overseas, a trend that looks likely to continue in coming years, a report released this week says.
...
The 2012 survey by EIC showed that more than 70 percent of Chinese students returned home after studying abroad.

Source:

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It really shows how the developed world never expected the Chinese to try eat their lunch. They just assumed the Chinese could never move beyond the low skilled manufacturing.

It looks like China is moving faster than many have expected:

MOSCOW, April 30 (RIA Novosti) – China could surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy this year, sooner than widely expected, the Financial Times reported Wednesday citing the world’s leading statistical agencies.

The US, which has been the global leader since overtaking the UK in 1872, remained the world’s largest economy in 2011 but was closely followed by China, according to figures compiled by the World Bank’s International Comparison Program.

Most economists previously thought China would overtake the US as early as in 2019.

“With the IMF expecting China’s economy to have grown 24 percent between 2011 and 2014 while the US is expected to expand only 7.6 percent, China is likely to overtake the US this year,” the report says.

The figures “revolutionize the picture of the world’s economic landscape, boosting the importance of large middle-income countries.” India is the third-largest economy, followed by Japan and Germany.

Russia, which accounts for more than 70 percent of the CIS, comes sixth and Brazil, which makes up to 56 percent of Latin America, is ranked seventh, the report said, citing the ICP survey.

Source:

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China really deserves to be world's largest economy again (as it used to be for centuries).