Chinese Economics Thread

[iewgnem]

The most important thing is that China stays on top of technological development, even if GDP growth is stagnating. Don't want to turn into Japan or Europe after all. In the 18th century, China and India had the vastly larger GDP then all European nations, but of course a large economy based mainly on agriculture couldn't compete with industrial nations.

I think the concept of GDP is gonna get a little weird in the coming decades, just like it did in the 18th century. In a world where human labor drives every part of the economy, GDP makes sense. In an increasingly automated world where production exceeds consumption because most of the human workers are replaced by robots, what does the economy, global trade and GDP look like? You could have weird scenarios where a nation's GDP is super low because the majority of the population lives on welfare because the robots took most of the jobs and the economy is super efficient, so money doesn't get exchanged much, but is so automated and efficient that they can do shit like pump out dozens of aircraft carriers in a year and for a fraction of the prize. Compared to a country with low automation that has a very healthy consumer class and thus GDP, but everything they make is super expensive, labor and time consuming, meaning their actual production of material goods is tiny compared to the automated nation.

China's robot density went from 322 in 2021 to 470 in 2023, with a base that's already the largest industrial workforce in history, this represent the largest and fastest increase in productivity ever observed in human history.
China's automotive export went from 1 million to 6 million in the last 36 month, that's on average +80% every year, growing in month what it took western countries decades to achieve.
China is the only large economy not suffering from inflation, and America cries every week about how China's producing too much.

Even GDP growth of 5% is a gross under-estimate of what's happening, what we're seeing is a divergence toward singularity with the phenomenon being measured saturating the primitive economic model created by the west.

 

[supercat]

Retail sales still sucks, central government give the cash for kids!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1868477008378028056

For the first 11 months of 2024, retail sales grew 3.5%, while industrial output expanded 5.8%.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1868491491447845009

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1868487524752003087

China's electricity demand in 2023 increased by 7% and it is on track to grow by that much again this year.

People caught up in the Western narrative for China refuse to see how incredible any growth is and how immensely potent this constant surge in electricity demand is and how well this bodes for the future:
View attachment 140983

All economic activity in a modern economy run on electricity.

Talking about electricity, China will become the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world this year.

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[GiantPanda]

I don't know much about China's economy but I do know that since Malaysia opened out visa free entries for Chinese tourists, there is a huge influx of people coming in from China and they are among the highest spending tourists group, and many of them are young people with a lot of money.

We are expecting 5 million Chinese tourists in 2025, to spend USD6.75 billion in Malaysia. If the young people are so hard hit by bad economy in China, where did they get the money to travel?

I also see Xiaomi Su7 EV and Huawei Mate 70 phones etc sold like hot cake, reaching billion yuans of sales within 24 hours. is China's economy bad? I find it hard to believe the nay sayers.

You actually touched on several very important points that loom large in any discussion as to the direction of the Chinese economy:

1) Before the Pandemic, Chinese tourists were the largest spenders in the world by far. The heft of the Chinese consumer economy is often understated. Combined with being the largest market for overseas tertiary education (college bachelors and doctorates), the spending power of Chinese citizens overseas is far greater than even that of the US in the beginning of 2018.

2) For an economy that is in the midst of RE de-leveraging, the current high levels of internal travel and now returning overseas travel plus the practical rise of an new market in EVs points to consumer spending that is EXTRAORDINARILY good when we consider what usually happens to a RE
de-leveraging of this magnitude. They complain about a 3.5% increase? Well, in 2009 retail sales CONTRACTED 3.6% during the American sub-prime RE de-leveraging.

China is going through a massive restructuring of its economy along with the de-leveraging. There are always losers and winners when an economy changes. Millions are punished by their RE investments. But millions more are set to benefit from the new paradigm of R&D and leading edge manufacturing.

Overall trend in China is best exemplified by the increase electricity demand and production. An economy that can use up 7% MORE electricity every year can't help but grow at a pretty prodigous clip.