Housing bubble now an employment bubble? Their economy continues to look like a house of cards but more importantly what is the ramifications of millions of young men who cant find jobs or are underemployed? In case you cant read the NY Times I'll post the graphic. Don’t Be So Picky About a Job, China’s College Graduates Are Told This year’s estimated graduating class of 11.6 million students is expected to be the largest ever, and future classes are expected to be even bigger. At the same time, the economy is not growing like it once did. The problem of youth unemployment may not abate for a decade, carrying potentially bigger ramifications for the country’s leadership, said a June report from the China Macroeconomy Forum, a think tank with Renmin University of China. “If it is not handled properly, it will cause other social problems beyond the economy, and it could even ignite the fuse of political problems,” the report said. China’s youth unemployment rate has doubled in the last four years, a period of economic volatility induced by Beijing’s “zero Covid” measures that left companies wary of hiring. In addition, government crackdowns and tighter supervision have subdued once-vibrant industries such as online education, technology and real estate — fields young people had flocked to for jobs.
WTH is off topic to an OP supposed to mean? Fat finger perhaps? He probably meant his customary come on man.
The actual rating isnt important. He randomly clicks a rating to signify he read the post. It's thoughtful.
OP is topical; and, the subject has also been discussed in the thread "How China's military views the US". Millions of unemployed young males? And, since the CCP controls communication do you really think the problem is as small as they say? China has pissed off a lot of countries - over-fishing in and near territorial waters, forming and claiming "islands" to cut off trade routes, sticking countries with debt for poorly executed projects, stealing IP and hacking. Now, they've got serious issues internally. Does anything think the centrally planned government will accept responsibility for the economic issues to come? Hell no! In the fine old tradition of "point the finger" they will blame foreign interests and probably try to invade Taiwan to spur on nationalism internally. Interesting times.
For anyone who gets the WSJ, this is a really good article on how bad things are in China. The cliff notes, the real estate bubble has wiped 18 trillion in household wealth away, greater than the 2008 crash here. Greater than the value of their entire stock market and roughly one years GDP. And that’s keeping in mind they had far lower household wealth to start with. Nearly 80 million vacant units, and they are now in decline on working age population. Their combined household and government debt exceeds 300 percent of GDP, and they are still unwinding. Latest projection has them not passing us in GDP until 2050 or so. If then. A few years ago it was projected for this year. This all matters for a lot of reasons, but the pessimistic view is that if things continue to go south, a war is the best way to unite the population and take pressure off the government. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-economy-excess-debt-gdp-46c69585
And keep in mind all of these are either official Chinese numbers which can be skewed, or outside estimates, so it could be even worse. But this is where the whole idea of a centrally managed economy blows up. You need incentive for innovation, free exchange of info so people would have known how bad the housing market was and chosen to invest or not invest accordingly, market forces to control excess, and sufficient motivation for workers to produce. Our system may be Darwinian and even cruel sometimes, but it’s far more efficient in the long run.
You're correct in your observation 'the rating isn't important,' but his predictable clicks are sourced from an endless passive aggressive tactical supply. He probably thinks he's being cute - cute like a hemorrhoid. If so, success - as a constant irritating presence rarely contributes anything of value.
Nothing a good war can’t solve. That’s been the despot’s remedy to growing domestic problems since time immemorial.
Interesting chart. What are they spending their money on? They make cheap stuff and pay their people shit. Military and spy balloons?
They are spending more on defense. And they probably have much better purchasing power than us. And they just steal our tech which we can’t seem to secure. Infographic: China Steps Up Military Spending
It's our strength and our weakness. Unlike the CCP, we're never going to lock down our society to a point where these secrets wouldn't be venerable. And that's also the reason we lead the world in design and innovation. So, you take the good with the bad. That said, we cut off the chips (and ability to make them) which is huge and manufacturing has been coming back for a while now. And for all their shiny new J-20s, they still can't take Taiwan and they know it.
Last part is no longer true. Chinese workers make more than Mexican, for instance, with less value add. Most of the cost savings (EV's) is due to direct CCP subsidies.
Not as good as ours. But what do you think paid for all that high speed rail, big dams, canal projects (that won't work), etc. Who pumped money into the rare Earth's industry? Who is currently pumping money into the EV industry? All that pretty stuff they like to brag about? Paid by the CCP. Or maybe it was the "private" banking system that is also owned and run by the CCP. House of cards that's starting to teeter pretty badly. Not even comparable to our system, where things like their real estate crisis (1000x worse than 2008) would have been headed off far earlier here. The minute it got out that people were pre-paying mortgages and that the houses weren't being built or were only 1/2 built (and the buyers didn't care because it was just an investment, like a stock) it would have been over. It certainly never gets to the point where you have hundreds of millions of additional (worthless) stock, and have to literally blow up entire communities. Like, imagine having to blow up an entire Village in The Villages because it was all a giant scam and all the people who bought just lost their entire investment. That's what's happening, at scale, in China. Note: The housing "market" comprises up to 70% of Chinese citizen's savings. "Gulp!"
I don’t know but I’ve read that Americans on Medicare are going bankrupt while Chinese can walk in off the street and get an MRI done for $100.
It's worse than just being centrally managed. It's also centrally financed. All the companies ask the central government for money to finance their projects, and if the grease the skids enough, they get the money. The central government has no idea what projects to fund. There are disconnects all over the place. The old pre-1990 Russian economy, bad as it was, was centrally-planned, but financed by the companies themselves, I believe. China's system has land-mines all over the place, especially when the economy gets turbulent.
