Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
- Start date
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Blackstone
Brigadier
There seems to be general agreement China's economy is stabilizing, but Bloomberg's data doesn't say much about its economic reforms and re-balance. Nevertheless, previous data showed healthy consumption growth, so it's likely China's economy is growing even as it reforms by shifting some resources from the state sector to consumers. We need more facts and data to be sure, but things are trending in the right direction for the Middle Kingdom. It'd be nice to see a study on links between China's "old economy" with OBOR. Maybe the new demand from Belt and Road are absorbing the excess capacity in the old economy? Need more data!
Market turmoil at the start of the year was linked to fears of an imminent hard landing in China, as equities tanked and concerns about yuan depreciation mounted in light of sizable capital outflows.
But as the year has progressed, worries about the state of the world's second-largest economy have abated as economic data have firmed. There's a bevy of evidence from domestic figures and other metrics sensitive to the state of the Chinese economy now showing that the nation isn't in the midst of a disruptive downturn.
According to Bloomberg's monthly growth estimate, the Chinese economy has expanded by in excess of 7 percent year-on-year from March through August as monetary conditions remain accommodative.
Both of the nation's manufacturing purchasing managers' indexes — which show the health of the manufacturing sector based on factors like production, orders, and employment — have returned to a level over the past few readings.
A chart from Macro Strategist George Pearkes also testifies to improving activity in the region: annual container throughput growth at Southeast Asian ports has moved higher in 2016 after decelerating the previous year.
Source: George Pearkes/Bloomberg
Australia, which counts China as its largest trading partner, has seen its currency — unloved in the wake of the downturn in commodities — trend higher in 2016. The Reserve Bank of Australia cited "steadied" conditions in China when it made its decision to on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, for the first time in nearly five years, implying that China won't be sending a deflationary impulse abroad.
Two commodities that have traditionally been in high in demand amid China's infrastructure build-out — iron ore and copper — have seen prices rise over the past year, and gain sharply in recent weeks.
The infamous Li Keqiang Index, a proxy for the growth of the "old" economy based on bank loans, electricity production, and rail freight, has nearly risen at a double-digit pace through September, its fastest pace since 2013.
Policymakers in Beijing have shown their ability to expeditiously engineer growth bounces via credit expansion. While strategists caution that this stabilization mechanism won't be available forever, it's certainly helped give market participants one less reason to fret during a tumultuous year.
"The good Chinese data has been greeted, once again, by cries that they are buying a little growth with too much credit expansion," writes Kit Juckes, global strategist at Societe Generale SA. "Which seems true and probably will see this growth bounce run out of steam in the New Year."
Big data is a hot topic appreciated in China today. The data is there just for the cloud owner to use, just like Google knows what you are searching and Youtube (Google again) knows what you are watching.
A plan (by the government) as mentioned in the title? Never heard about it. But then probably it will never be announced as China is ALWAYS Authoritarian
(how could you expect a "bad" guy to admit he is doing "bad" things?). So how could one know? You have to make your own take as you wish.Made up by western journalists? It is surely WRITTEN and SPOKEN by western journalists according to these articles. Whether "written" equal to "making-up", again, one has to make own take.
What am I really saying? Simple, one believe what one want to believe. Really, nothing to debate about.
hehe, just read it. Here is my answer to Penny Pritzker.
Is there a trade to begin with? You just refused to sale intel chip to me, how could there even be a trade?
again
No sale (Intel chip), no competition.
Fair from your mouth? An embargo is fair competition, trading rules?
I am sure she slept in her English language course in high school, she should go back to finish it before the next speech.
If I were to do things different from what I preach, I would have chosen to keep my mouth shut in this kind of situation to avoid being caught. Apparently Ms. Pritzker and the same sorts including Obama choose the opposite, keep on shooting at their own feet, keep on being caught when their pants down.
Last edited:
Blackstone
Brigadier
It's not that clear cut. I say that because China enjoys three major advantages no one else can match. They are best-in-class economies of scale, massive government R&D support, and state owned enterprises.
On economies of scale, China has unbeatable inputs of production and increasingly sophisticated manufacturing capability, supported by an envious globe transportation network. It's tough to beat it. But, that's fair play on China's part and everyone else will just have to learn to deal with it.
The second competitive edge is massive government support in R&D. I think it's just too bad most countries don't have the foresight, political acumen, or resources to do likewise. China isn't doing anything wrong or unfair, so stop complaining and deal with it.
China-scale SOEs, on the other hand, distort the market and give the nation unfair competitive edge. That's the part that needs addressing by the community of nations. However, since few nations willingly offend China, it's left to a handful of strong ones to push back. Enters the United States.
broadsword
Brigadier
China is not the only country that gives government support for R&D. Taiwan and Japan did the same thing too. But did the US apply remedial measures on them? If not, the US is being discriminatory even if it had the prerogative.
Except that, in China's case, it resounds with political overtones regardless of the economic consideration.
Good points above.
China is a Communist lead Socialist state. SOEs are the pillars for China to be a Socialist state. That is a fact to stay. Like it or not, no international trade rules can be used against a sovereign state's institution, not in WTO's framework. Western nations including US should address the challenges that are brought by the newly coming Chinese SOEs, BUT only by improving their own competiveness by domestic means. Remember, nobody has the right to question how economy is run within the US either, so face it. For the sake of argument, Chinese Industrial and Information Ministry would not say anything if US turns LM, Boeing to SOEs.
On top of that, if you see SOE has an "unfair" advantage in Chinese success, doesn't it mean that SOE actually is a superior setup? Why don't US or all Western countries adopt that to beat back China? Won't those many SOEs improve market competitions and benefit the world population? At least, Intel would have to lower their Chip prices under the pressure of Chinese SOEs, and you will pay less for your new laptop even if you stick to made in US. You should welcome the SOEs, I believe.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
This is an excellent article about the role of smartphone as catalyst for innovation and forming of innovation hot bed like silicon valley. Just like the space program and the need for integrated circuit power the rise of Silicon valley now it is Shenzen turn with smart phone technology
First posted by Swoosh in CDF
How smartphones made Shenzhen China's innovation capital
Updated by Dan Wang Nov 4, 2016, 9:10am EDT
Everyone knows that smartphones are one of the biggest innovations of the past decade. But the technological implications of smartphone technology go far beyond the smartphone itself.
If you pry open your iPhone or Android device, you’ll see computer chips that provide the phone’s computing power as well as chips that enable the phone to do things like take pictures, do wireless communications, and pinpoint their location with GPS. Over the past decade, companies have invested millions of dollars in figuring out how to make them small, cheap, and light enough to include in smartphones.
And most of these chips have proven useful well beyond the smartphone market. As a result, we're in the midst of a hardware renaissance, in which it's easier than ever to develop and market new gadgets.
The center of this renaissance is Shenzhen, a city in southern China known as the Chinese Silicon Valley. This is where a large fraction of the world’s smartphones are made, and it has emerged as a leading center for new technologies that build on the capabilities of smartphone chips.
In 2013, Chris Anderson coined the phrase "the peace dividends of the smartphone wars" to describe this flowering of innovation. Anderson was mostly focusing on how smartphone technology was powering the nascent market in low-cost drones. Three years later, those dividends are larger — and more broadly distributed — than ever before.
How Shenzhen became the capital of smartphone innovation
Shenzhen wasn't always known for economic vitality. In 1979, it was a fishing village with a population of 300,000 that happened to be adjacent to the British-ruled metropolis of Hong Kong. The following year, the Chinese government began a program of economic liberalization and designated Shenzhen as a "special economic zone," freeing it from China’s more onerous regulations.
The results were astonishing. Shenzhen quickly became a manufacturing hub, then diversified to finance and services. It’s now the headquarters not only of some of China’s most innovative tech companies but also of large insurers, banks, and airlines. The city draws migrants from every region of China. Shenzhen's population is now estimated to be around 12 million. It is already one of the most expensive cities in China, and its housing costs have not stopped rising.
Shenzhen has been the site for homegrown innovation, including from domestic smartphone companies like Xiaomi and Huawei (which focuses on making telecommunications equipment). The city is the headquarters of Tencent, maker of the app WeChat, which has been described as Facebook, Uber, Spotify, PayPal, and Amazon rolled into one. And a recent Wall Street Journal report finds that manufacturers in the region no longer need to import so many high-tech parts from overseas; instead, they can find materials made locally.
Close to the center of Shenzhen is a massive market called Huaqiangbei, which is dedicated to selling electronic parts; it’s where you can purchase wifi devices, sensors, a circuit board, or 100,000 circuit boards. The city is full of incubators and consultants who specialize in hardware production. This cluster of manufacturing expertise is one reason the Economist declared Shenzhen the best place in the world for a hardware innovator to be.
Apple decided that the first iPhone would be manufactured in Shenzhen by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn. Shenzhen is now totally dominant in mobile production, turning out not just iPhones but also Android devices for the whole world. And the spillover effects of these innovations have made it a lot easier to develop new products. Electronic components that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars (if they could be bought at all) may now only cost a few dollars, allowing more inventors to prototype and produce.
The manufacturing boom has come with a tragic side. Factory managers building products with razor-thin margins have often treated workers poorly. The workers in Shenzhen and surrounding cities have usually been migrants from rural areas. They’re far from home, not always adapted to a rapidly growing city, and usually without many social protections. Notoriously, Foxconn put up nets around its plant in 2010 after more than 11 people killed themselves in the span of a year. In spite of government crackdowns and monitoring by international organizations, many workers still suffer abuse.
Hoverboards show the power of Shenzhen’s economic model
Hoverboards might provide the most colorful example of how smartphones have enabled spinoff technologies. Most hoverboards sold in the US have been brandless, because they were made by no-name manufacturers. Planet Money investigated their origins and found out they were made in Shenzhen by managers of factories that were manufacturing circuit boards, wheels, motors, and more.
Planet Money reported that the concept of the hoverboard may have originated from a US-based inventor. But Shenzhen manufacturers independently developed their own version of the hoverboard with a different design. Instead of having a single inventor, the design of the Shenzhen hoverboard seems to have been the result of a collaborative process, in which engineers discussed ideas over drinks and on online forums. As soon as it proved a success, more than 1,000 factories began to produce their own hoverboards, without much care for intellectual property rights.
This had a huge downside: The poorly designed devices had a tendency to catch on fire. But their origin story reveals something interesting about Shenzhen. The hoverboard was helped along by the network effects of a cluster of manufacturers, and the infrastructure was in place to scale up production to meet demand as soon as the product proved a hit.
First posted by Swoosh in CDF
How smartphones made Shenzhen China's innovation capital
Updated by Dan Wang Nov 4, 2016, 9:10am EDT
Everyone knows that smartphones are one of the biggest innovations of the past decade. But the technological implications of smartphone technology go far beyond the smartphone itself.
If you pry open your iPhone or Android device, you’ll see computer chips that provide the phone’s computing power as well as chips that enable the phone to do things like take pictures, do wireless communications, and pinpoint their location with GPS. Over the past decade, companies have invested millions of dollars in figuring out how to make them small, cheap, and light enough to include in smartphones.
And most of these chips have proven useful well beyond the smartphone market. As a result, we're in the midst of a hardware renaissance, in which it's easier than ever to develop and market new gadgets.
The center of this renaissance is Shenzhen, a city in southern China known as the Chinese Silicon Valley. This is where a large fraction of the world’s smartphones are made, and it has emerged as a leading center for new technologies that build on the capabilities of smartphone chips.
In 2013, Chris Anderson coined the phrase "the peace dividends of the smartphone wars" to describe this flowering of innovation. Anderson was mostly focusing on how smartphone technology was powering the nascent market in low-cost drones. Three years later, those dividends are larger — and more broadly distributed — than ever before.
How Shenzhen became the capital of smartphone innovation
Shenzhen wasn't always known for economic vitality. In 1979, it was a fishing village with a population of 300,000 that happened to be adjacent to the British-ruled metropolis of Hong Kong. The following year, the Chinese government began a program of economic liberalization and designated Shenzhen as a "special economic zone," freeing it from China’s more onerous regulations.
The results were astonishing. Shenzhen quickly became a manufacturing hub, then diversified to finance and services. It’s now the headquarters not only of some of China’s most innovative tech companies but also of large insurers, banks, and airlines. The city draws migrants from every region of China. Shenzhen's population is now estimated to be around 12 million. It is already one of the most expensive cities in China, and its housing costs have not stopped rising.
Shenzhen has been the site for homegrown innovation, including from domestic smartphone companies like Xiaomi and Huawei (which focuses on making telecommunications equipment). The city is the headquarters of Tencent, maker of the app WeChat, which has been described as Facebook, Uber, Spotify, PayPal, and Amazon rolled into one. And a recent Wall Street Journal report finds that manufacturers in the region no longer need to import so many high-tech parts from overseas; instead, they can find materials made locally.
Close to the center of Shenzhen is a massive market called Huaqiangbei, which is dedicated to selling electronic parts; it’s where you can purchase wifi devices, sensors, a circuit board, or 100,000 circuit boards. The city is full of incubators and consultants who specialize in hardware production. This cluster of manufacturing expertise is one reason the Economist declared Shenzhen the best place in the world for a hardware innovator to be.
Apple decided that the first iPhone would be manufactured in Shenzhen by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn. Shenzhen is now totally dominant in mobile production, turning out not just iPhones but also Android devices for the whole world. And the spillover effects of these innovations have made it a lot easier to develop new products. Electronic components that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars (if they could be bought at all) may now only cost a few dollars, allowing more inventors to prototype and produce.
The manufacturing boom has come with a tragic side. Factory managers building products with razor-thin margins have often treated workers poorly. The workers in Shenzhen and surrounding cities have usually been migrants from rural areas. They’re far from home, not always adapted to a rapidly growing city, and usually without many social protections. Notoriously, Foxconn put up nets around its plant in 2010 after more than 11 people killed themselves in the span of a year. In spite of government crackdowns and monitoring by international organizations, many workers still suffer abuse.
Hoverboards show the power of Shenzhen’s economic model
Hoverboards might provide the most colorful example of how smartphones have enabled spinoff technologies. Most hoverboards sold in the US have been brandless, because they were made by no-name manufacturers. Planet Money investigated their origins and found out they were made in Shenzhen by managers of factories that were manufacturing circuit boards, wheels, motors, and more.
Planet Money reported that the concept of the hoverboard may have originated from a US-based inventor. But Shenzhen manufacturers independently developed their own version of the hoverboard with a different design. Instead of having a single inventor, the design of the Shenzhen hoverboard seems to have been the result of a collaborative process, in which engineers discussed ideas over drinks and on online forums. As soon as it proved a success, more than 1,000 factories began to produce their own hoverboards, without much care for intellectual property rights.
This had a huge downside: The poorly designed devices had a tendency to catch on fire. But their origin story reveals something interesting about Shenzhen. The hoverboard was helped along by the network effects of a cluster of manufacturers, and the infrastructure was in place to scale up production to meet demand as soon as the product proved a hit.
Last edited:
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
(cont)
Many modern gadgets are built on smartphone technology
InterDrone Conference For Commercial Drones Held In Las Vegas
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Hoverboards are just one of many examples where Chinese companies used chips developed for smartphones to build other kinds of innovations.
There has been a lot of innovation in drone technology over the past decade, and much of it has been made possible by smartphone components. Batteries developed to power smartphones for a whole day have increased the length of time that drones can stay in the air. Powerful, but low-power, smartphone processors help too. Sophisticated wifi and Bluetooth wireless chips have allowed drones to stay in touch with their owners over longer distances.
It should be no surprise, then, that Shenzhen has become the center of the world's drone production. The world's largest drone maker, DJI (which produces the Phantom and Inspire series), is based in Shenzhen, amid factories that churn out much of the world's circuits, batteries, and cameras.
That’s not to say that Chinese drone makers are merely assembling smartphone parts. Increasingly, they’re advancing the state of the art in software and hardware. Drone cameras use image stabilization techniques that take sharp pictures even in flight. And companies like DJI are improving the state of computer vision, which allows them to recognize different objects, paving the way for better autonomous navigation.
Virtual reality devices also owe a debt to the smartphone. VR headsets need high-quality sensors to track the precise movement of users. Smartphones are packed with sensors — gyroscopes, accelerometers, and proximity sensors — and it’s been possible to reuse many of those chips in VR headsets.
VR headsets also need small, high-resolution screens to display sharp video. Smartphones have created a huge market for this kind of screen, allowing VR headset companies to piggyback on their innovations.
The low cost and power consumption of smartphone chips has enabled even smaller and cheaper devices like the Fitbit or the Pebble Watch. Wifi chips are getting embedded in more and more “smart” household objects, from light switches to doorbells.
Smartphone technology has been important for self-driving cars. The many types of sensors, wifi chips, and cameras improved by smartphones are now being installed to let cars drive autonomously. Samsung and Qualcomm, two companies that are heavily involved in making smartphone components, have recently announced that they’ll be getting into the business of making chips for self-driving cars.
A final example involves nanosatellites. These are very small satellites (weighing between 1kg and 100kg) that can replicate many of the functions of traditional satellites, but at a fraction of the cost. They cost under $1 million — instead of more than $200 million for a traditional satellite — and can be launched by the dozens at a time. A “phonesat” launched by NASA in 2013 was little more than a Google Nexus One smartphone in a satellite’s frame; NASA has explicitly credited “consumer-grade smartphone technology” for making the nanosatellite revolution possible.
Not all of these devices would have been possible to build without advances in smartphone technologies. Or they would have cost millions each if the world hadn’t manufactured billions of smartphones. And given that smartphones keep getting better, we should continue to expect more innovations, especially from manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen.
Many modern gadgets are built on smartphone technology
InterDrone Conference For Commercial Drones Held In Las Vegas
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Hoverboards are just one of many examples where Chinese companies used chips developed for smartphones to build other kinds of innovations.
There has been a lot of innovation in drone technology over the past decade, and much of it has been made possible by smartphone components. Batteries developed to power smartphones for a whole day have increased the length of time that drones can stay in the air. Powerful, but low-power, smartphone processors help too. Sophisticated wifi and Bluetooth wireless chips have allowed drones to stay in touch with their owners over longer distances.
It should be no surprise, then, that Shenzhen has become the center of the world's drone production. The world's largest drone maker, DJI (which produces the Phantom and Inspire series), is based in Shenzhen, amid factories that churn out much of the world's circuits, batteries, and cameras.
That’s not to say that Chinese drone makers are merely assembling smartphone parts. Increasingly, they’re advancing the state of the art in software and hardware. Drone cameras use image stabilization techniques that take sharp pictures even in flight. And companies like DJI are improving the state of computer vision, which allows them to recognize different objects, paving the way for better autonomous navigation.
Virtual reality devices also owe a debt to the smartphone. VR headsets need high-quality sensors to track the precise movement of users. Smartphones are packed with sensors — gyroscopes, accelerometers, and proximity sensors — and it’s been possible to reuse many of those chips in VR headsets.
VR headsets also need small, high-resolution screens to display sharp video. Smartphones have created a huge market for this kind of screen, allowing VR headset companies to piggyback on their innovations.
The low cost and power consumption of smartphone chips has enabled even smaller and cheaper devices like the Fitbit or the Pebble Watch. Wifi chips are getting embedded in more and more “smart” household objects, from light switches to doorbells.
Smartphone technology has been important for self-driving cars. The many types of sensors, wifi chips, and cameras improved by smartphones are now being installed to let cars drive autonomously. Samsung and Qualcomm, two companies that are heavily involved in making smartphone components, have recently announced that they’ll be getting into the business of making chips for self-driving cars.
A final example involves nanosatellites. These are very small satellites (weighing between 1kg and 100kg) that can replicate many of the functions of traditional satellites, but at a fraction of the cost. They cost under $1 million — instead of more than $200 million for a traditional satellite — and can be launched by the dozens at a time. A “phonesat” launched by NASA in 2013 was little more than a Google Nexus One smartphone in a satellite’s frame; NASA has explicitly credited “consumer-grade smartphone technology” for making the nanosatellite revolution possible.
Not all of these devices would have been possible to build without advances in smartphone technologies. Or they would have cost millions each if the world hadn’t manufactured billions of smartphones. And given that smartphones keep getting better, we should continue to expect more innovations, especially from manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen.