WeChat Pay data for 5/1 holiday weekend. Everything up. Inbound/outbound tourism way up. This is a healthy sign of things
Chinese Economics Thread
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WeChat Pay data for 5/1 holiday weekend. Everything up. Inbound/outbound tourism way up. This is a healthy sign of things
It has now been over five years since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on data from the newly released IMF April 2025 WEO database, China's share of world GDP (PPP) during this period has risen from 18.1% in 2019 to 19.8% in 2024, while that of the United States has dropped from 15.4% to 14.9%. In fact, the combined economies of China and Russia are now bigger than the combined economies of the United States and India, which wasn't the case in 2019.
So there you have the overall verdict of these five years, during which time the U.S. media was filled with doom and gloom stories about China's imminent collapse: The pandemic failed to halt China's rise. This partially explains, in my view, the increasingly desperate attempts by the U.S. to kneecap China, from worldwide export controls to GPU data centers to now a full-on de facto trade embargo.
So there you have the overall verdict of these five years, during which time the U.S. media was filled with doom and gloom stories about China's imminent collapse: The pandemic failed to halt China's rise. This partially explains, in my view, the increasingly desperate attempts by the U.S. to kneecap China, from worldwide export controls to GPU data centers to now a full-on de facto trade embargo.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Your view?
I seem to remember a lot of your COVID recovery posts along the lines of, "This quarter, the US actually outgrew China! We are falling behind! Not only are we smaller but we are growing more slowly now! I don't see how it's possible to overtake the US in our lifetimes," during America's first recovery quarter, which is always the strongest, when China has already gone to the second or third quarter.
Or "China's nominal GDP is now a smaller percentage of America's this year than last year! CCP closed down too hard; we're falling behind! America's economy is unstoppable! Their recovery beat China! COVID doomed us," when China devalued the yuan to keep in line with the rest of the world rather than the US, leading to weaker exchange rates.
Thats why you need to watch what they do, not what they say. If Chinese economy was in the gutter as MSM propaganda has been proclaiming through 4 years of Biden, why did Yellen initiate the visits to China almost every year?
broadsword
Brigadier
You left out demography: Oh no, falling TFR.
I will admit that I am sometimes a bit too pessimistic; that is because I try to be objective and seriously consider alternative viewpoints and especially China's weaknesses, which if ignored, will only grow worse. In watching economics and world affairs, nobody knows for sure what will happen and it really pays to be humble. But when these alternative narratives of China's fall turn out to be overblown, I will also point that out as I did in my post above.
Well, regardless of whether we are optimistic or pessimistic at the end of the day we are nobodies and can’t influence top level decision making in China or the U.S.
It does explain why she thought inflation was transitory…
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
You try to paint yourself as a careful person, better to overestimate the opponent than to underestimate him. That is wrong. Type I error can be as deadly or moreso than type II error, especially when I have seen you on multple accounts advocating to basically give up to the US, that China should sacrifice its interests to try to make friends, that Americans, the people who voted Trump in, are good people, that COVID could have been made in a Chinese lab, that the CCP oppressed your father over something he said on WeChat, etc...
It's just not believable that those things came from someone who was just foolish enough to heavily favor overestimating your enemy in fear of underestimating him. Those are the words of a pro-American concern troll because I remember all your past posts and people who are pro-China just do not say these things.
I left many things out. There's also, "The Chinese economy is failing because we are selling less cars! Nothing matters other than cars! If the economy is really healthy, then explain why we sold less cars this year than last year??"
Now that Chinese EVs are hot, I don't hear a peep out of him anymore.