China's leadership seem fairly intent recently on destroying the areas where China's economy was picking up. Tech companies, software developers, and now anything innovative that would benefit from external investment to get off the ground.
The China and the US are both doing this in some kind of twisted PR standoff. The only way anything the US is doing makes any sense is through this lens.
If they are trying to cover up a crash, it'll be a typical example of why centralised control fails so hard at economics. A crash isn't like a storm or something where a new force appears; it is a recognition that past decisions were not as effective as people at the time thought. Trying to fight a crash just keeps people doing destructive work for longer instead of moving on and finding some other activity.
Yes I agree, but in a dictatorship the interests of the country and the interests of those at the top are not aligned.
Another example of this recently - imprisoning your top entrepreneurs is a great way to ensure that your tech industry completely dies, but only over a long time frame as nobody comes up to replace the current companies (they all leave if they can). In the short term it offers great opportunities to enrich the leadership at the expense of all that wealth generated in previous decades, and at the expense of course of the country's future wealth.
So long term a disastrous decision for the country, short term it pays out for the current leaders if their cover up domestically is sufficiently thorough and there are other events to distract the populace (e.g. expansion through war).
> in a dictatorship the interests of the country and the interests of those at the top are not aligned.
I wish that was a problem only in dictatorships.
> long term a disastrous decision for the country, short term it pays out for the current leaders if their cover up
Dictators will remain in charge long term. To that extent their interests are better aligned with those of the country. I decision that will be bad in the medium term can be quite good for the ruling party in a democracy if they lose the next election and can persuade the electorate to blame whoever is in charge at the time.
No, not how dictatorships work. They usually work by keeping the supporting 2nd layer below the dictor happy and under control, which has nothing to do with country as such.
Coincidentally, things could align, but they often don't.
Isn't Chinese history the elephant in the room here?
IMHO most Chinese citizens remember that whenever they fight each other (civil war...) disasters happen, and therefore the most important mission of the government is to squash any growing quarrel. Everything else is ancillary.
No, why would it? A mix of local ineptitude and revisionist history isn't really saying anything about the counterfactual. Why is China not as rich as the West if it has had the better governance for a long time?
I don't think nor wrote that it "had the better governance", and merely proposed an explanation for what we know (acts of the governments, reaction of most citizens).
> in a dictatorship the interests of the country and the interests of those at the top are not aligned
It isn't either in a democracy.
In a way it's even more insidious in a democracy because the corruption is hidden better by one or a few layers of indirection. In the end however corruption and interests of the powerful is king.
AFAIK in China there is no real 'dictatorship' related to economics, companies...
The government listens carefully to top bosses describing in which way it can help them. The major challenge is for them to align their various plans.
The government also acts as a referee, crushing quarrels they cannot tackle themselves, in a brutal way (this may be an approach adopted in order to entice them into rather solving it by themselves, letting the referee act as a last resort).
As a Chinese (entrepreneur or not) if you stay away from politics and, as a big fish boss, play by those "let's cooperate in order for the gov to help all of us" rules I doubt the gov will annoy you.
> imprisoning your top entrepreneurs
Jack Ma (Alibaba) was AFAIK playing at best solo, and at worse against most other entrepreneurs in his sector, and didn't abide to numerous warnings. Then he directly publicly and harshly criticized the financial sector, and announced that his company will become more and more of a direct competitor for banks. The gov then took care of his case.
I like J. Ma, however it seems to me that his style, probably forged through his personal history, isn't compatible with the way things are done in China.
Was another top entrepreneur imprisoned?
This approach is way more efficient than my own government (the European Union and France's government) way: acting as the boss of bosses by devising its own strategy with at best vague (and often neglected) inputs from experts (most chosen among friends or lobbyists) then burning huge amounts of money into void projects (often nurturing cronies), taxing everything in sight, promulgating laws framing any new thing...
See the recent very public humiliation of formerly very prominent ex-president Hu Jintao, the flip-flopping on Covid, or the fixation with Taiwan for how much power one man wields. This is a dictatorship.
As to unofficial disappearances, here's a short list of the most prominent, imprisoned and threatened for becoming popular and/or critical of the regime:
As to saying China is more efficient than France, France is a terrible example for efficiency, so that's a very low bar, but at least France isn't a dictatorship and has rule of law, I know where I'd feel safe investing.
> prominent ex-president Hu Jintao
> Covid
> Taiwan
My point was only about business (relationship between companies and the gov).
> unofficial disappearances
Apart from Jack Ma (I proposed an explanation), this list isn't about business: artist, actor, Interpol chief, and "A Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in sometimes gossipy books about China’s political elite".
> foreign companies have been threatened
Indeed, my point was only about Chinese entrepreneurs and bosses, sorry for having neglected to state it.
> they also insert CCP members at board level in companies to control their direction
"The party doesn’t habitually micromanage their day-to-day operations. The firms are largely still in charge of their basic business decisions"
Also: "But pressure from party committees to have a seat at the table when executives are making big calls on investment" may be in line with my hypothesis: the gov enforces respect of a strategy defined by all (AFAIK the Japanese MITI also acted this way).
My point isn't about the Party's ways to enforce the strategy of a sector but about the method used to define this strategy: it seems to me that it mainly is defined by companies' bosses.
There also is a real will to strictly control the political side of things, which may explain some actions, which aren't the usual way.
If you want another business example how about the founder of Foxconn, made some pro Taiwan statements and running for president there, then suddenly gets investigated and inevitably will be found guilty.
'For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law'
China does not have rule of law, the law is used to intimidate rivals for power and applied very selectively. This is not just for people at the top, businesses at all levels feel this danger. It’s also not just for business people but anyone prominent. These are all hallmarks of a dictatorship.
My point was not about the nature of the political regime but about it's ways towards businesses: does it emits strong directives on all accounts/levels?
My point is that, albeit there are perimeters strictly under its exclusive control (Taiwan being one, battles opposing Chinese individuals/companies being another), entrepreneurs and bosses are quite free to decide and to act.
Everything related to Taiwan is heavily politically loaded in China, this is one of the few taboos, and everyone knows it there.
So as long as you don't cross any of the constantly shifting and entirely arbitrary red lines (Tiananmen, Tibet, Lockdown, Taiwan, Xi, any gov policy) you're safe?
This sort of behaviour and cooking the books by falsifying data is not compatible with foreign investment or a growing economy.
Now Xi (and unfortunately the rest of China with him) will reap the inevitable consequences of his policy shift from relatively open to a closed dictatorship.
there are people thinking government should leave economy alone, there are people thinking central banks should use financial tools to control inflation and other things. China is not covering up, it is trying to control a crash.
China does not need external (as in 'foreign') investment. They have huge amounts of cash.
The strategy seems more about decoupling and independence from foreign interference and potential sanctions. Likewise, when foreign investors leave it is also because they've seen what was done to Russia and thus don't want to repeat that with China, which would be massively more costly.
Edit with data:
In 2022 Chinese households accumulated $1tn in savings, just over that year (this is something typical in China because of lack of safety net and lack of investments avenues, hence also why everyone wants to buy property to invest their cash):
https://www.crugroup.com/knowledge-and-insights/spotlights-b...
They do? Probably should tell the average citizens in China who are having trouble withdrawing cash out then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9odXNPldCI. I think some banks were kind enough to tell their customers to withdraw in a few months. Other banks just zeroed out their customer's bank account.
They have massive amounts of debt and it's becoming a problem which is likely one of the reasons they're trying to hide the data. It's provincial debt and state company debt which is mainly internal so I don't really understand the implications of it.
$1tn in savings is $660 per person over an entire year? I know purchasing power is a big thing but I’m not sure whether to interpret this as a large amount or not.
Yeah, I wasn't clear. They talk about "excess savings", which, as far as I understand, are additional savings relative to baseline, so total amount of money saved should be much higher.
China has a long history of closing itself away against foreigners and their disruptive ideas, yes. It also has a long history of stagnation caused by the same.
At the end of the day, "wanting to be a superpower on par with the US or greater" and "isolating yourself from barbarians" are two incompatible goals. Superpowers need to build coalitions and attract allies; this cannot be done without some mixing of the involved nations, even if it just concerned students, businesspeople, investors, soldiers and diplomats.
FWIW between Blue Orca Capital LLC and China I would choose China all the time.
They are simply trying to short China to profit, like they did before so many times.
This is not even news: in "Regulation of platform market access by the United States and China: Neo-mercantilism in digital services" published in 2022 you can read
Since 2009, both countries have progressively restricted access to each other's domestic information services markets. In both cases, the primary stated rationale involved national security claims rather than trade policy concerns
Tech companies are examples of runaway mindlessness. Their scale has lost purpose long ago. They are over valued and over rated from a social cost stand point.
Their capabilities don't translate to real world reduction in health costs, education costs, housing costs, energy costs, defense costs etc. They infact increase those cost for everyone with time.
It's pseudo innovation from con men or the clueless. Natural that govts are reacting and overreacting. Good times are over world over. Jurassic Park is out of control.
On the other hand, a widespread capability of WfH, which wouldn't be possible without tech, or at least not in contemporary volume, is likely putting a downward pressure on housing in attractive areas.
If a well-earning programmer settles somewhere in a rural place, it means a) more money spent in a small community, b) one fewer affluent person seeking housing in an urban hotspot.
I would guess that the aggregated effect worldwide is an order of magnitude higher than whatever passes in Portland and SF.
> ... likely putting a downward pressure on housing in attractive areas.
The theory is good. Unfortunately, that downward pressure doesn't seem to be having any effect for cities in many western nations. Pretty close to runaway house pricing these days. :(
I am one such case, I moved away from Prague (insane real estate prices, some of the worst in the EU) to Ostrava (city where I was born, rust belt, real estate prices around 40 per cent of those in Prague), while being able to earn the same money at a distance.
Ofc I had to lower my expectations with regard to good restaurants etc., but the resulting slack in our monthly household budget is enjoyable.
If everyone did what you did, Ostrava would become unaffordable. And that would happen much quicker than in Prague because the high quality of life and experiences in Prague means people are willing to sacrifice some things, often space, which means you can build a lot more housing in the same space, in return for the experiences.
People will be unwilling to live in a small apartment or house in Ostrava the way they would in Prague so prices would skyrocket to beyond unaffordable very quickly.
The point is that the population used to be much more dispersed, even 20 or 40 years ago. If more people like me moved back to their ancestral regions, the demand would become a lot more distributed.
The current trend of everyone coalescing into a few ant-like megalopolises has to revert somehow, otherwise we will end up in a dystopia: casket-sized microapartments costing 50 per cent of your income in rent.
Land is enormously valuable in huge cities and that is what is driving the cost of living up. Meanwhile, there is a ton of underused land elsewhere.
The CCP answer is that it's for the state. Policing benefits from enhanced data collection. Social media allows them to control and monitor domestic discourse. Consumer electronics exports create vast amounts of foreign exchange and very sticky attachments to international supply chains.
not really. Chinese government was regulating specific behaviors of companies, all are legit concerns, not against the companies themselves. Example: companies fighting each other using monopolistic tactics that doesn't bring benefit for anyone (Tencent music locking exclusive rights, Taobao forcing sellers for exclusivity, Taobao can only use Alipay). Online lending coupled with financial instruments (Alipay giving out loans to anyone without credit checks and using asset-backed security scheme to massively increase amount they can lend out (ABS is cause of US 08 financial crisis, controlling this in 2020 might have avoided a systematic crash this year due to housing problems).
All other activities are fine, and specific areas basically are real tech are very much supported, eg, semi, semi equipment, chip design, EDA, etc. Chinese gov are saying instead of thousands of smartest phds trying to figure out how to play financial games, get them to build the lithography machine, cuz the latter creates real economic value.
That's what I always say. Contrary to popular belief, the current ruling party of China poses a much bigger threat to China than any external factor such as the US, Taiwan or India would ever achieve.
There is an meme online titled "When China made a decision", followed by a picture of the Prime Minister of Singapore laughing (see link 0 for sample), hinting the fact that due to many mistakes made under Xi's administration, companies/economic entities (including Chinese founded ones) are moving away from China to Singapore, often citing social control and economic reasons.
However, I don't really think that's all Xi's fault. There are so many things you just simply don't know if you're a child of nepotism. The party highleaders created their own social class, and as result, they and their offspring became disconnected from the reality more and more generation by generation. Most of them has so little experience of real people and so many experience of nepotism, it is already a miracle if they can still maintain a healthy mental condition, let alone the capabilities needed to do things right.
The same kind of disconnection can also explain why the highleaders believed that the Wolf Warrior Tactic was a smart move: they simply don't understand how politics work, so the most primitive solution became the most obvious to them.
I thought of this as why authoritarian regimes are so so bad at propaganda -- they have no experience in interacting with a normal, sometimes adversarial media landscape.
At home, they say the sky is red, everyone says "Yes" or gets a visit from the secret police.
So they do the same thing elsewhere, and there's criticism, memes, humor, apologism, etc... all the features of a more open information space with diverse opinions.
But they have little basis for how to interact with that, because they didn't need any of the nuanced soft power skills at home.
And so you get Russia endlessly repeating 'Everything is proceeding as planned in the special military operation' and China saying the Philippines "deliberately stirred up trouble" by navigating and claiming Philippine UNCLOS-EEZ waters in the Spratlys.
> At home, they say the sky is red, everyone says "Yes" or gets a visit from the secret police.
That is the old(er) (outdated?) view of propaganda. The/A new view is to generally not necessarily care about about any particular message:
> We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”
They promised there children programming jobs and a golden future. But the party wants them to work in factories, just like dad did. They created the ilusion of upwards mobility in a society with no upwards mobility and burden those youngsters at the same time with a aging population. If you can not win, why even play?
but don't American political sphere think Americans want factory jobs? Did the role switch? Chinese don't want factories jobs and Americans do? Or does American political sphere overestimates how much real people in American want factory jobs?
most probably it's exaggerated, China youth unemployment rate should be similar to that of my Country, Italy, which is at 22% officially, a couple points down unofficially (off the books jobs, people getting state benefits that should not get etc. etc.)
EDIT: in Italy we measure youth unemployment for people up to 34 years old
in the range 15-24 (the one used in the linked article) the unemployment rate is 40.2% on average, 38.8% for men and 42.6% for women
In the case of Norway there’s most probably some geo-politics in play, too, as they’re a NATO country. Looks bad to have NATO money help develop an ideological enemy.
it owned shares worth about $42 billion in some 850 Chinese companies. Those investments will be managed in future from its Asia hub in Singapore, it said.
The decision to close its Shanghai office was driven by “operational considerations” and doesn’t affect the fund’s investments or its investment strategy in China, NBIM said in a statement on Thursday.
We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.
I don't know you, but I don't trust someone who will only let me read a piece of information in exchange for stealing my personal data...
China has an uncanning ability to shot herself in the knee. Best example would be the fleed of Zheng He.
"He was buried at sea, and the fleet turned back to China. Soon after, the emperor, supported by Confucian officials, ordered the ships to be burned and outlawed most maritime trade. In what was a purely political move, all official records of the voyages were systematically destroyed."
This fleet was light-years ahead of what Columbus had available. But it was Europe who conquered the world and colonized the so called new world, not China.
"His book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa."
I had a look into his book. It is not written very scientifically. From a review: "A true academic work would have been far more careful to distinguish between what is hard evidence and what is inference, assumption, and hypothesis."
Known by Europeans; it's been "known" / inhabited for at least 10.000 years. As far as I'm aware there's no records of other major players visiting / "discovering" it though besides the Norse.
Many South Americans seem to have died, unfortunately, from diseases.
"Today we think of the Amazon as a pristine rainforest, sparsely populated by indigenous communities. But in records from the 1500s, Spanish colonizers describe a densely populated region, crisscrossed by canals and sunken roads and dotted with bustling, fortified towns. Unfortunately, fortification couldn’t protect the towns’ inhabitants against European diseases, which devastated South American indigenous populations and left the fortified villages abandoned."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/network-of-fortified...
"Some 5 million people may have lived in the Amazon region in AD 1500, divided between dense coastal settlements, such as that at Marajó, and inland dwellers. By 1900, the population had fallen to 1 million and by the early 1980s it was less than 200,000."
Interesting how introducing new pathogens works. Does anyone know why the opposite didn't happen? Why didn't the European colonizers die to American diseases?
Many of the most deadly pathogens to indigenous Americans were born from livestock or frequent cross-exposure between different populations spanning Europe and Asia.
The Europeans had endured some of the most devastating diseases that arose do to them choosing to live in close quarters with animals. The Americans just didn't have this habit. A lot of terrible diseases come from something that jumped species.
The Old World was a much larger "disease production lab", especially zoonotic one, where a disease jumps from an animal to a human. This transmission happens especially often between domesticated animals and people who are in everyday contact with them.
The New World people only domesticated a handful of animals, such as the guinea pig and the llama. So, fewer opportunities to catch something from them.
Still, they had a new disease that spread to the Old World: syphilis, which certainly killed several million Old-Worlders, only it took longer to run its course and could be prevented by, well, chastity.
An interesting idea: if you count victims of smoking towards the total death toll (tobacco is a New World plant), it may well be that the Old World suffered more deaths from the Columbian Exchange. But spread over a much larger population and a much longer time, these deaths didn't amount to destruction of entire civilizations.
No, but the millions that ended up in the US, and who couldn't even stay in the same hotels, go to the same schools, or eat at the same restaurants as "good" white folks until the 1960s, were...
"how they didn't become the disgusting colonizers the European colonial powers became..."
China occupied and absorbed a lot of nearby nations during its existence. 4000 years ago, what passed for China was much smaller than today's PRC territory.
The fact that the Chinese (like the Russians) expanded on land instead of sailing towards their colonies on ships shouldn't play a role in labeling their activity as fundamentally colonial.
Even now they are trying to displace the Tibetans from Lhasa, with only the low atmospheric pressure (which causes health problems to people stemming from lowlands) standing in their way.
>China occupied and absorbed a lot of nearby nations during its existence. 4000 years ago, what passed for China was much smaller than today's PRC territory. The fact that the Chinese (like the Russians) expanded on land instead of sailing towards their colonies on ships shouldn't play a role in labeling their activity as fundamentally colonial.
Oh, yes it does. Very much so.
All nations fight with their neighoring nations, did so back in the millenia old past, back in the day, and still do today: they have disputes, they go to war, they sometimes merge, and so on. Even Italy and Germany, for example, was just a bunch of smaller regions, not long ago (19th century), and the annexations, neighbor fighting, and disputes in Europe continue to this day.
Not all nations became colonizers though, war and annexation of some neighborhood land is not "colonization", and it's a handful of European countries that did so in the 19th and 20th century - while presenting themselves as beacons for freedom and englightenment.
"Not all nations became colonizers though, war and annexation of some neighborhood land is not "colonization"."
I happen to think otherwise, being from a nation that was targeted by both German and Russian imperialism.
Whether the invaders roll in in chariots, tanks or ships is an irrelevant technical detail for me. The goal is the same, domination over somebody weaker than you, usually supported by resettlements of foreigners to your territory.
Ask, e.g. the Baltic nations whether what Stalin did to them was not "colonialism". The USSR in general engaged in forced russification of everyone.
It's always been strange to me that it's seen as a worse crime if the guy who takes over your village is a European who arrived on a boat rather than the neighboring warlord who arrived on a horse.
The people who advocate for such double standards may have their own agenda.
E.g. occupying a position of a "decolonization" officer somewhere (some institution of higher learning?) and having a secure job with no performance reviews + power over others until they retire.
Perhaps because this a strawman formulation of the difference, as if it's roads vs boats.
Countries have disputes and go to wars with their neighbors, and neighboring areas are historically mixed populations, which drives tensions as to who owns what, and such, often resolved in wars (which are seldom one sided: historically the offending sides alternate). And usually those countries are of the same or similar development stage, plus they have to live close together, as populations, so enslavement is rarely if ever the case, nor is it made about racial inferiority.
So, yeah, "the neighboring warlord who arriving on a horse" is not some 10-100x stronger and richer global power coming to the other side of the world to make your people slaves, considers you racially inferior, displays you in human zoos, and even declares open season and hunts you like animals, while they steal your resources...
> And usually those countries are of the same or similar development stage, plus they have to live close together, as populations, so enslavement is rarely if ever the case, nor is it made about racial inferiority.
This is just demonstrably untrue. Plenty of neighboring warfare is still waged on the basis of race. Look at the history of the Middle East. The history of Europe itself. Look at Israel and Palestine. Look at Japan and Korea's history of warfare... or really Japan vs any of its neighboring Asian countries. Han nationalism, if we want a Chinese example since that's what this topic started with. All of these examples also involve slavery at various levels.
Being neighbors does not in any way shape or form make for "better" or "gentler" war as far I can tell from history. Your point just doesn't hold up to obvious historical data.
Bear in mind, I don't say any of this to absolve the evils of colonial powers. It's just strange to me that in the modern day it's treated so differently when it doesn't really look like a deviation at all from man's "usual" cruelty.
>Ask, e.g. the Baltic nations whether what Stalin did to them was not "colonialism".
I could ask them, but I would get diverging opinions, especially if I go back to the generations that actually lived under that (and who often expressed how they find it "better" in several ways, in published post-1991 polls).
Not to mention the civil tension even at the start of this, pre- and post-WWII, between pro-communists and pro-USSR at the time (which had sizable popular support among European peoples, from Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese and so on, including sizable numbers in France and Germany) and also much more remote parts of the world, and which was squashed with quite a lot of blood and far right terrorism. Czechoslovakia itself had quite a strong communist party, way before 1948.
> Not all nations became colonizers though, war and annexation of some neighborhood land is not "colonization",
True.
However, forcing the invader's culture and practises on the conquered people and taking steps to replace the local language, culture, politico-legal systems and social structures is. Did or did China not do this to the people it conquered?
>However, forcing the invader's culture and practises on the conquered people and taking steps to replace the local language, culture, politico-legal systems and social structures is.
That's orthogonal, more like cultural imperialism. Some colonizers did it, others were just fine with not imposing any of their culture on the locals, simply because they merely wanted to use them as slave labour or primitives to be utilized.
It's also not an exclusive sign of colonialism. All countries that emerged from a merger or combination (like in Europe, from Spain, France, Italy, and Germany, to Austro-Hungary and the balkans), whether through war/annexation, peaceful merging, or revolutionary nation building, unite the culture of the parts, usually based on the dominant cultural group from before. This happens both for business and governing needs, but also organically through job migration, commerce, and so on - and often includes some coercion. Not sure China's case is heavier than others, especially given the era.
> But it was Europe who conquered the world and colonized the so called new world, not China.
A Chinese emperor once famously said to the British: “Our celestial empire possesses all things in abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of barbarians in exchange for our own products.”[1]
Old civilizations are deeply connected to their geography, and once they settle down in a fertile area, they generally don't feel the need to colonize or fight people beyond their immediate neighbourhood. Barring a couple of exceptions, the Chinese and Indian experiences are very similar.
The only reason Europeans went out on their ships was to find a sea route to India after their traditional routes were blocked by the Turks and the Arabs.
A small comment: the cited sentence predates the Opium Wars by many decades and comes from a reply to a failed British diplomatic mission (Macartney mission). Though the events are certainly loosely connected.
“Our celestial empire possesses all things in abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of barbarians in exchange for our own products.”
Yes. And it became very clear to them, there was something they SHOULD have bought. Military Technology!
The fans of "illiberal democracies" should probably pay attention - and China is not anywhere near a democracy.
When your system relies on the whims of a single man, who sooner or later will become much smaller than his ego, bad things are going to happen.
Not going to psychologically profile Xi here, but he really reminds me of the Valley and crypto bros who walked into easy money during the past decade and are now convinced they are financial and leadership prodigies.
Who said it relies "on the whims of a single man"?
Knowing the history of such governments, there would be all kinds of higher level competitors, party factions, bureucracy, lower-level party and local government interests (and thus resistance to things going against it), and so on. With enough of their support, anybody at the top can be toppled, or even arrested. It's a nation of 1.4 billion people, with complicated politics and a well entrenched party rule, it's not some solitary James Bond villain running the show. We just get the simplified cartoon version of it.
There are obviously internal dynamics - Xi is not sitting there micromanaging every province with his morning coffee, and neither does Putin. They deputize, but unfortunately for them - personal loyalty becomes more of an asset than competence, and then it becomes a problem.
Anybody at the top can be toppled - if you understand the risks to you and your family when your, uh, eccentricities become known.
Xi used to face some opposition prior to the last party Congress but he managed to have much of them replaced by loyalists [1] [2]. So it's increasingly becoming a one man show.
I feel like economics has gone backwards, for generations now, in its understanding of monetary/debt/macroeconomic inflation.
I don't think we ha "The Answer" before. But now we don't even have the questions anymore.
A country/economy can't "borrow from the future," or save for the future. We can invest in the future. We can eat the seedcorn, but those are very limited.
China used debt creation, like other economies did/do to catalyze increased economic activity. That economic activity is from the present, not the future. Present construction workers doing work, getting paid..
It demonstrably represents economic potential being realised. The "unsustainable" part is the debt. Meanwhile, paying back the debt (the economy as a whole) creates the reverse process. Economic activity recedes.
I think the prevalence of "jubilee" in ancient culture is a clue. Economies really do need a debt cancellation mechanism to be stable. Bankruptcy is insufficiently scalable.
The west's "solution" has been nationalisation of debt. But, instead of a preprepared plan, it's a chaotic, emergency event that only a handful of bankers understand before it's too late.
Using debt to buy a better future is a tried and tested economic mechanism. The idea being that your eventual economy is so much bigger than the debt. Taiwan is an example where it was even potentially risky but still paid off.
China did use debt like this but it has added too much debt at the provincial and company level for things that won't pay back ever.
Western countries do this too. If the US used debt to fund some of the infrastructure projects it sorely needs then that might pay off. If it uses debt to keep taxes lower then that can't have a payoff. It does both of course, but more on taxes and maintenance than on infrastructure.
What countries could do with is a way to stop themselves being able to make these bad decisions on spending. The EU had an idea of fiscal rules that you needed to implement to be part of the club, and that did help clean up some newly joining economies... but then everyone in the EU already just ignores the rules.
China’s borrowing from the future involves more than just debt. And also, the direction of the debt is not as clear as you would think.
For 1, the Chinese have built up unsustainable infrastructure with very limited usage that needs to be maintained. Even if you jubilee away the debts picked up future generations will still be paying for the maintenance of infrastructure that simply doesn’t have the usage to justify it.
For 2, a very significant amount of debt, especially in the property sector, is owed by massive hundred billion dollar businesses to ordinary people who invested their entire life savings into buying an apartment which has not been built. If you forgive the debt, you end up with the poorest people subsidizing the biggest companies in the world.
You get to the crux of the issue with point 2. China is a nation of savers. They put their savings in real estate with the idea that line would always go up. That real estate value is going to come down, and China will be old. Enough homes for everyone after haircuts are taken, but not much else. China will look more like Japan or Italy in the future.
China represents the perfect argument for why aristocratic and or authoritarian regimes inevitably collapses, due to lack of sustainable procedures and viewing social and especially political progress as a threat.
1st is that fascistic regimes is in theory one of the most efficient government you can have as you can easily circumvent due process and fast track whatever you want.
However in practice only investing or making the decision happen is what gets fast tracked, the actual task of running saif facility is another story entirely, where sustainable practices will degrade and corruption, stagnation and negligence will grow.
2nd is due to the lack of political, cultural and social research, innovation and development.
Instead the (hardliners of) CCP
(like Xi Jinping) views these as fundamental threat to their rule, however these are just as crucial to your society as economic, scientific and technological research, innovation and development is.
It's why we in the west still have democracy, democracy is a lot more inefficient but its very flexible and sustainable.
The issue is even we haven't been focusing on these 3 policy areas as such we see certain negative cultural, political and social stagnation and degradation due to the insistence of neopolitics (neo-con, neo-lib, third way) that we only need to focus on economic, technological and scientific progress.
You don't need a well educated population to sustain democracy, you need however an active population that knows that democracy is more than just voting, it's joining a political party, lobbying, working to maintain and expand institutions.
Ok let me reword that, a well informed population with a actual indepdant media (news paper, tv, radios, magazines) that is NOT owned by a handful of people just a talking piece for one party or another.
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