Chinese Economics Thread

[tphuang]

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With Indonesia restricting Nickel export for 2026, China is now importing more from Russia. 53% of its refined nickel import in December was from Russia vs 20% in Indonesia. I'm still waiting for the Nickel ore and pig iron data to come out. Most of this is for stainless steel production and various chemicals.

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I would imagine that China's thirst for Russian copper and Nickel are really surging, especially since Russian metals are going to LME anymore. This worked out really great for China.

Another metal commonly used in advanced alloy, which is Chromium. China is also seeing surging import, which likely indicates they are producing a lot more high end alloys.

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[vincent]

China simply lack money lol. Just look at the subsidies provinces give to couple. No way in hell that can boost birth rate. At the same time, China hold massive surplus but don't want to convert it to RMB to increase the subsidies, fearing that will destroy their export. Hence trillions of USD sit in the banks for nothing.

dude, trade surplus is not tax revenues. The money get from trade are earned by mostly private enterprises, not the government.

 

[jli88]

Collapse in births this year(2025), I am really astonished what has happened in 2025, every year I am thinking it won't come much lower but every year it is. I thought this year we will see 8.5m which is really low but we have only 7.92m, last year it was 9.54m. TFR most likely felt below 1.0. We're going South Korea and Taiwan province direction. Now no reason for restraints and conservatives policy. Huge subsidies are needed now no later to try to change anything in birth rate.

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China is uniquely positioned among all countries in the world to handle this because it can use both carrots and sticks more effectively, and in a more widespread way.

Apart from what people have already mentioned, huge internal propaganda push needs to be made. All CCP cadres need to have at least 4 kids. Companies need to be fined for any bias towards pregnant woman. Companies need to be have quota for woman with kids. Lot needs to be done.

China has the advantage that it can take unconventional steps, but the problem needs to be recognized and courage/commitment mustered soon. This is a solvable crisis for China only if it is serious about it soon enough. Right now unfortunately, the steps are too few and too far in between. Monetary incentive is too low, almost laughable.

 

[august1]

China is uniquely positioned among all countries in the world to handle this because it can use both carrots and sticks more effectively, and in a more widespread way.

Apart from what people have already mentioned, huge internal propaganda push needs to be made. All CCP cadres need to have at least 4 kids. Companies need to be fined for any bias towards pregnant woman. Companies need to be have quota for woman with kids. Lot needs to be done.

China has the advantage that it can take unconventional steps, but the problem needs to be recognized and courage/commitment mustered soon. This is a solvable crisis for China only if it is serious about it soon enough. Right now unfortunately, the steps are too few and too far in between. Monetary incentive is too low, almost laughable.

But to play Devil's advocate, China also has some unique challenges in terms of increasing its birth rate compared to other countries with super low birth rates. First and foremost is of course the One Child Policy which, while technically starting in 1980, lasted for a full 40 years in some urban areas such as Chongqing. This has created an unparalleled social acceptance of families only having one child, which persists strongly to this day. Senior cadre are also even more likely to only have one child because their careers would have been instantly over if they had more prior to 2014 (unless they were an ethnic minority). Secondly, China is simply a lot poorer per capita than almost all other countries with comparable fertility rates, making it much more difficult and costly to offer the generous financial incentives and other perks that other countries provide.

 

[vincent]

Enough demographic talk. Further posts will be deleted.

 

[jli88]

China grew 5% in real terms, and only 3.9% in nominal terms (based on current renminbi levels) in 2025. The currency appreciated by 4.1% (year ending 2024 vs year ending 2025), so the nominal growth in USD nominal terms is 8.36%.

This is significantly slower than what South Korea was growing at a similar level of GDP.

In fact, USA is set to grow faster in nominal (local currency) unit terms.

At this stage, China should grow nominally at around 10%. With the property collapse, China now needs a major stimulus directed towards the tech sector and child birth.

Metric	2024	2025
GDP Growth (Real Renminbi Terms)	5	5
Nominal GDP Growth (Current Renminbi)	4.2	3.9
Currency Appreciation	-2.81%	4.1
Nominal GDP Growth (Current USD)	1.37%	8.36

 

[manqiangrexue]

China grew 5% in real terms, and only 3.9% in nominal terms (based on current renminbi levels) in 2025. The currency appreciated by 4.1% (year ending 2024 vs year ending 2025), so the nominal growth in USD nominal terms is 8.36%.

This is significantly slower than what South Korea was growing at a similar level of GDP.

In fact, USA is set to grow faster in nominal (local currency) unit terms.

At this stage, China should grow nominally at around 10%. With the property collapse, China now needs a major stimulus directed towards the tech sector and child birth.

Metric	2024	2025
GDP Growth (Real Renminbi Terms)	5	5
Nominal GDP Growth (Current Renminbi)	4.2	3.9
Currency Appreciation	-2.81%	4.1
Nominal GDP Growth (Current USD)	1.37%	8.36

Why is this needed? I care about real GDP; this reflects China's ability to produce tech, for its military, and for the Chinese people. Why do you care so much about nominal GDP, something that can be raised and dropped at will by manipulating currency exchange rates? So China can buy more imports? China does what's good for China; sometimes it increases the RMB/USD and it looks like China didn't grow this year in nominal GDP. Then sometimes, China decreases the RMB/USD and suddenly the West freaks out and says China's GDP grew by more than the entire value of Canada's GDP this year. So what do you want to see happen and why?

And what stages are you talking about? When was Korea ever at the superpower challenge stage? Where are you reading what the correct nominal gdp growth should be for the superpower challenge stage?

 

[jli88]

Why is this needed? I care about real GDP; this reflects China's ability to produce tech, for its military, and for the Chinese people. Why do you care so much about nominal GDP, something that can be raised and dropped at will by manipulating currency exchange rates? So China can buy more imports? China does what's good for China; sometimes it increases the RMB/USD and it looks like China didn't grow this year in nominal GDP. Then sometimes, China decreases the RMB/USD and suddenly the West freaks out and says China's GDP grew by more than the entire value of Canada's GDP this year. So what do you want to see happen and why?

And what stages are you talking about? When was Korea ever at the superpower challenge stage? Where are you reading what the correct nominal gdp growth should be for the superpower challenge stage?

Nominal isn't merely in USD terms, its also in yuan terms. Why is nominal important? That's a long discussion about deflation and its negative effects.

I am comparing with Korea because that's the country that reached the developed stage recently. Korea is not a contender for a super power because it lacks mass. Give Korea a billion people, and it would be a superpower contender.

As for what I want, in micro terms:

I want Chinese citizens to be as rich as an American, owning large homes, driving large/expensive cars, having greater buying power.

I want them to work less, produce more kids.

I want the brightest minds from China (someone like the Yao class students) staying predominantly in China. I want international talent to immigrate to China en masse.

I don't want them sitting in factories producing rubber ducks for a wage of 1000 usd a month. Such things, unless extremely important from a national security point of view, should be imported.

In macro terms, I want:

A big stimulus that targets the tech sector, and boosts child births.

 

[fishrubber99]

I am comparing with Korea because that's the country that reached the developed stage recently. Korea is not a contender for a super power because it lacks mass. Give Korea a billion people, and it would be a superpower contender.

The main issue with your comparison is that a smaller country like South Korea is given an option to specialize and become competitive in a select few industries (shipbuilding, vehicles, chip production, smart phones, appliances, etc) in order to become wealthy. An example of this is Hyundai, Hyundai has already been eclipsed by BYD in sales, but the SK auto industry is much more mature and only has a handful of brands and companies, whereas China has over 100 auto brands. But they only need a handful of domestic auto brands which sell well abroad in order to raise the aggregate wealth of their population (through domestic job creation, R&D spending in, etc) because they have a much smaller one. Exporting their way to wealth (as the other Asian tiger economies have done) is also a viable strategy for South Korea, which China can't possibly employ due to China's scale (there are not enough people outside of China to consume China's surplus production and will inevitably lead to trade friction).

Another issue is that their nominal GDP in USD terms also matters more because they import far more as a share of their GDP than China (44% vs. 17%). China consumes much more of its own production so nominal GDP in USD terms is not as important an indicator of material wealth. A country the size of China will also inevitably consume more of its own production than smaller countries, so this is a structural phenomenon.

And one final thing is that China is a much larger country geographically and population wise, and its conditions basically lend itself to be unevenly developed. South Korea doesn't have the same challenges since all of the country's major cities are coastal or have easy access to the coast, for example.

A fairer comparison would be to measure China's coastal provinces and cities (like Shanghai or Shandong) with South Korea since in terms of scale and geography they are more comparable.

 

[siegecrossbow]

What is this stupid obsession with nominal value about?