How China's Military Views the United States

dingyibvs · Jun 6, 2023

oragator1 said: ↑

Two independent numbers on chinas growth.

“China’s authoritarian leader Xi Jinping was sworn in for another five-year term last week. Martinez’s model suggests Beijing may have overstated GDP growth by a third over the past two decades, making its economy far smaller than claimed.

A report published by the Brookings Institution in 2019 suggested that China had been overstating its economic growth by about 2% every year, making its economy 12% smaller than official figures then claimed.”

Satellites Shed Light on Dictators' Lies About Economic Growth.

As far as the youth unemployment, basic logic says that if they are making the numbers look better on the overall economy, the youth unemployment could very well be worse than reported. As mentioned, if it wasn’t a serious problem they wouldn’t be trying to get kids to move to the country, they clearly have an issue there.
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The methodology of the Brookings paper is far beyond my understanding, but they did mention and address some of my immediate questions. Particularly, I wondered if a focus on lights, freight, etc. is still appropriate for an economy that's rapidly becoming more dependent on services than manufacturing. I don't have the knowledge to understand what their explanation means though.
Overall, I think their conclusion that the growth rate is overestimated by ~15% seems plausible.

As for the thing about Xi calling for youth to go to the countryside, I found the source for it here, quoting Google translation:

习近平出席中央农村工作会议并发表重要讲话_滚动新闻_中国政府网

Xi Jinping pointed out that it is necessary to adhere to the unwavering principle of the party's leadership in "three rural" work, improve the leadership system and working mechanism, and provide a strong guarantee for accelerating the construction of an agricultural power. It is necessary to insist on five-level secretaries to grasp the revitalization of the countryside, and the secretary of the county party committee must be a good "front-line commander". It is necessary to increase the training of agriculture-related cadres, improve the work skills of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", improve their work style, and build a team of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" cadres who are politically sound, adapt to the requirements of the new era, and have the ability to lead the construction of a strong agricultural country. We must adhere to the combination of local training and external introduction, focus on strengthening the training of village party organization secretaries and leaders of new agricultural management entities, comprehensively improve the quality of farmers, and make good use of local talents; we must introduce a group of talents and guide college graduates in an orderly manner Go to the countryside, capable people return to their hometowns, migrant workers return to their hometowns, and entrepreneurs enter their hometowns to help them solve their worries so that they can stay and start businesses. It is necessary to improve the village-level organizational system led by the village party organization, and build the rural grass-roots party organization into a strong battle fortress for effectively realizing the party's leadership.
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Reading through the article (my God what a dense and drab read), it seems to be focused on the revitalization of Chinese countryside and strengthening the agriculture sector. The section calling for an infusion of young talent is a small part of the article and appears reasonable in the context.

chemgator · Jun 7, 2023

duggers_dad said: ↑

What makes you so sure that China is looking for a battle on the high seas when they can simply destroy US carriers with stand-off weapons ? Why do you think the US carrier group watched from the safety of the Philippines while China was simulating a takeover of Taiwan ?
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The weapons still have to be aimed. What are they going to use to aim the weapons, last week's newspaper reports of where the U.S. Navy is? Do you really think that China has enough anti-ship weapons to fire them randomly into a 1,000-square mile area and hit something?

chemgator · Jun 7, 2023

Barrons believes that China may be headed for a "lost decade", similar to Japan in the 1980's.

China May Be Headed for a Lost Decade

Last year China ended a disastrous zero-Covid policy that had crippled its economy. The question now is whether China will experience a lost economic decade as Japan did in the 1990s following the bursting of its property and credit market bubble. At the start of this year, against the backdrop of dimming prospects for the inflation-ridden U.S. and European economies, the International Monetary Fund along with many market analysts projected that the reopening of the Chinese economy would provide much needed support to the global economy.
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tampagtr · Jun 8, 2023

Subject to learning more, a rare point of agreement with Sen. Scott

duggers_dad · Jun 8, 2023

Europeans do not have our backs in a war with China over Taiwan …

Would Europeans Back Washington in a U.S.-China War? A New Survey Might Surprise You

duggers_dad · Jun 9, 2023

chemgator · Jun 9, 2023

China's economy is so bad that large numbers of Chinese young people have turned to "divine intervention". Young people have given up on the prospects of school and hard work and started going to pray for better luck at the temples. Lottery sales are also up.

People in China are so worried about the economy they're asking for divine intervention | CNN Business

Disillusioned by the deteriorating economic outlook, young people are flooding to Buddhist and Taoist temples to pray for divine intervention in securing jobs, getting into good schools or becoming rich overnight.
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Economic uncertainty has driven temple visits and tourism to new heights, according to analysts and travel websites.

“No school-going, no hard-working, only incense-burning” has been a popular hashtag on social media since March, referring to a growing trend among young people in China who escape a pressure-cooker society by going to temples to pray for luck.

“Incense-burning youth” has become the number one catchphrase in China’s tourism industry this year, according to a survey jointly conducted in April by Qunar.com, a travel website, and Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, which looked at the top travel trends.
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chemgator · Jun 10, 2023

A former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official jumps on the bandwagon claiming that China is headed for a "lost decade" of economic problems.

China is likely headed for a lost decade and won't 'eat our economic lunch,' former IMF official says

China's economy is likely headed for a so-called lost decade akin to the slump that hit Japan three decades ago, according to a former International Monetary Fund official.

After rebounding strongly early this year from the end of COVID restrictions last year, more recent indicators have pointed to sputtering growth.

In an op-ed in Barron's, Desmond Lachman attributed much of that to the bursting of China's housing and credit market bubbles, noting that Japan experienced a similar bust in the 1990s.

"We may be at the end of the period when China, the world's second-largest economy, served as the world economy's main growth engine and the main driver of international commodity prices," he wrote.
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tampagtr · Jun 10, 2023

Scary read, though nothing that new

duggers_dad · Jun 10, 2023

Going up in ailing China …

chemgator · Jun 10, 2023

Time for someone to read about the Skyscraper Index.

Skyscraper Index - Wikipedia

The Skyscraper Index is a concept put forward by Andrew Lawrence, a property analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, in January 1999,[1][2] which showed that the world's tallest buildings have risen on the eve of economic downturns.[3] Business cycles and skyscraper construction correlate[4] in such a way that investment in skyscrapers peaks when cyclical growth is exhausted and the economy is ready for recession.[5] Mark Thornton's Skyscraper Index Model successfully sent a signal of the late-2000s financial crisis at the beginning of August 2007.[6][7]

The buildings may actually be completed after the onset of the recession or later, when another business cycle pulls the economy up, or even cancelled.[5] Unlike earlier instances of similar reasoning ("height is a barometer of boom"),[8] Lawrence used skyscraper projects as a predictor of economic crisis, not boom.

One statistical study found that the height of buildings is not an accurate predictor of recessions or other aspects of the business cycle, but that GDP can predict the height of building construction.[9]
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tampagtr · Jun 10, 2023

chemgator said: ↑

Time for someone to read about the Skyscraper Index.

Skyscraper Index - Wikipedia
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Interesting. Is there a current application?

chemgator · Jun 10, 2023

tampagtr said: ↑

Interesting. Is there a current application?
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It could mean that China's economy is about to go in the crapper. Or maybe not.

tampagtr · Jun 10, 2023

chemgator said: ↑

It could mean that China's economy is about to go in the crapper. Or maybe not.
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Thanks. That’s what I thought, but wasn’t sure

duggers_dad · Jun 12, 2023

Fact-checked: True

chemgator · Jun 12, 2023

Don't look now, but somebody else thinks China's economy is slowing down.

China's economy is slowing down. Is it permanent?

Is the era of China's explosive economic growth coming to an end? Analysts have long believed China would someday overtake the U.S. as the world's biggest economy, the Economist reported, but the country's shrinking workforce and slowing productivity raise questions about whether the goal is attainable. If China can't catch up to the U.S. by the middle of the 2030s, "it may never do so."

The analysis comes amidst fresh signs of economic weakness in China. The country relies on exports to drive its economy, the South China Morning Post reported, but May exports were down 7.5 percent from a year earlier. The COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine have altered China's upward path, Axios reported — those events "prompted countries around the world to reassess trade relationships and the risks of relying on rivals for core products." Indeed, there is growing talk in the U.S. of "decoupling" from China as tensions between the two countries rise.

Perhaps the biggest long-term challenge facing China is demographic decline: The portion of residents above the age of 60 is expected to rise by one-third by 2050, Politico reported. The young people who remain may not be all that interested in picking up the slack. CNBC reported that "light labor" — a Chinese version of "quiet quitting" — is becoming popular: A quarter of college graduates are underemployed, and the country faces a record-high youth unemployment rate.
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As long as no one says that China's economy has clay feet . . .

What are commentators saying?
"So much for the Chinese economic boom," Desmond Lachman wrote for Barron's. Like the United States at the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, China is experiencing the collapse of housing and credit "bubbles," which in turn has sucked the energy out of a once-vigorous economy. That raises the potential of a "lost economic decade" — a stagnating economy — akin to what Japan experienced after its skyrocketing economy petered out in the 1990s. And it means that China probably won't beat the U.S. economy anytime soon. "We will find that the Chinese economy had clay feet."
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NOOOOOOO ! ! ! ! !

chemgator · Jun 12, 2023

China is using bribery to win bids for lithium production in South America in a bid to maintain a monopoly on metals for high-tech devices. Argentina has 20% of the world's known lithium reserves, and China is all over them like white on rice. Bolivia has 21% of the world's lithium deposits, and China has that country's production pretty well sewn up. It is a mystery to me why the civilized world continues to do business with a country known for massive bribery and theft.

Corruption is China weapon in effort to corner lithium market in Latin America, experts say

Chinese companies seeking to gain control of Latin America’s lithium reserves, amounting to about half of the world’s total, have an edge against which American and European companies cannot compete: a general willingness to ignore international rules against corruption, experts say.

Simply put, the Chinese are using bribery and other underhanded practices to shove American and European companies out of the lithium production industry in Latin America, hoping to gain a dominant role in key electronics industries, including cell phone, computers and electric car manufacturing, said Douglas Farah, president of IBI Consultants, a national security consulting firm focusing on transnational organized crime.

“Consumers around the world will soon be subjected to the yoke of a Chinese monopoly. Obviously, it’s worrisome for the United States; lithium touches everything, batteries for computers, cell phones. Everything revolves around lithium right now,” Farah said in a telephone interview.

The situation has begun to gain the attention of policy makers in Washington amid complaints from companies saying that China’s unwillingness to comply with internationally accepted anti-corruption rules is shoving everyone else out of the industry.
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chemgator · Jun 12, 2023

More corruption in China. A Samsung executive was caught stealing plans for a microchip-making plant in China, and building another plant based on the plans less than a mile away. Not sure why South Korea is allowing its mega-corporations to build microchip-making plants in China.

A former Samsung exec stole plans for a chipmaking plant in China — then tried to replicate it across town, prosecutors say

A former Samsung executive stole blueprints and trade secrets from his ex-employer — and then tried to set up a microchip factory in China less than a mile away from Samsung's own, prosecutors said.

The 65-year old man, whose identity wasn't disclosed, was charged by South Korean authorities with using secrets to attempt to set up the rival operation less than a mile from Samsung's chip plant in Xi'an, a city in central China. Samsung is based in Korea, where the chip industry is considered key to its economic competitiveness.

The technology prosecutors said was stolen by the man's China-based company would have been worth at least $233 million for Samsung. They charged six people employed by the man with "active participation" in the alleged tech theft.

Plans to establish a copycat factory — in what would be less than a 20-minute walk from one of Samsung's three chip-manufacturing plants in China — had begun to make progress before prosecutors intervened.
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tampagtr · Jun 13, 2023

Wow. 40% positivity rate. The reported deaths are almost certainly an underreport

In China, positive test rate for COVID rose to 40% last month
In China, positive test rate for COVID rose to 40% last month - Tampa Bay Times

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chemgator · Jun 13, 2023

More on the Chinese population problem: Last year, China recorded its fewest marriages in three decades. That's not going to help prevent the population from aging and shrinking. It's hard to say whether the reduction is due to Covid, the economic difficulties, or all the talk of war with Taiwan. Their peak year for weddings was 2013, which, incidentally, was the year I spent the most time in China (but did not participate in any weddings that I know of).

China records fewest marriages in more than three decades as population crisis looms | CNN

China last year recorded its lowest number of marriages since public records became available, furthering a nearly decade-long decline in matrimony that has coincided with falling birth rates and triggered government concern of a demographic crisis.

Some 6.83 million couples married in 2022, according to data released by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs on Friday. That’s down around 10.5% from the 7.63 million marriage registrations in 2021 and marks a record low since 1986, when the ministry began releasing statistics, according to state media.

The data represents marriage during what was an unusually challenging year for people in China, as the government’s stringent Covid-19 controls saw multiple cities and districts across the country locked down and daily life disrupted by a host of restrictions.

But it also extends what has been a steady decline in people choosing to enter into marriages since a 2013 peak, when more than 13 million couples tied the knot – nearly double the 2022 nuptials.
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