Comments by "Doncarlo" (@doujinflip) on "VisualEconomik EN" channel.

  1. Largest by value in production, wealth, and influence. China is a manufacturing superpower, but manufacturing is the least value-added, most price-sensitive, most easily substituted stage of the production chain compared to the R&D in the beginning and Sales & Services at the end. That's why XJP is so desperate to develop "new productive forces" as China gets stuck in the middle income trap, which is only getting deeper with global demand for direct-from-China collapsing.
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  2. ​ @stunstar4553 I wouldn't consider Tiānjīn and Chóngqìng -- which are large enough cities to be their own province -- as said "poor" examples.
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  3. It's not the best, but the "vibe" part is accurate because we overly focus on the prices and not the concurrent surge of wages and the relative ease of switching jobs.
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  4. ​5% _target_, not actual achievement (at least not without additional debt and creative accounting). True growth is likely near if not under zero.
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  5. Average of 78 before or after China's failed Zero-COVID program?
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  6. Gold and other limited-quantity media has the problem of being spent or hoarded at exactly the wrong stage of the business cycle. Going fiat basically eliminated the deep busts that led to bread lines and empire-ending revolts. That economic and social stability is what we gain at the price of our past individual labors gradually expiring over time.
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  7. At least there's fat to trim. Just like fat, the "excess" labor is a buffer that promotes operations continuity. Remember that efficiency and resilience are competing interests.
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  8. It wasn't separatism, but their institutional weakness and selfish attitudes that's dragging themselves down and making separatism apparently attractive.
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  9. ⁠… because Chinese state support allows Chinese companies to charge the lowest prices for the same quality and yield. The point of the tariffs is to make it so that China does not become unilaterally able to clear its own debts as an unfree sole source.
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  10. The libertarian narrative of personal freedom with state-enforced security is a utopia. A low-tax weak-state regime merely allows elites to further entrench themselves, which for the rest of society leads to violence as the vehicle of social mobility and community gangs as the protection. Hence why all the "fees"/"tolls"/"tips"/bribes endemic to low-tax weak-state Subsaharan Africa, and the dramatic devolution to this in Haiti.
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  11. Only Beijing-Shanghai and a couple other corridors are truly profitable. There's probably 10x more track that's net loss even after accounting for the local fapiao generated, because passengers and mail don't pay as much as bulk cargo. However most HSR viaducts aren't built as freight-capable quad track that really would've expanded China's internal transportation capabilities beyond the classic river routes.
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  12. Only to have a more stable foreign currency to ultimately convert into USD, much like Argentina is already doing with their direct CNY trades.
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  13. ​Right, Běijīng might think all this is a US-led conspiracy, when it's really just themselves successfully grabbing eyeballs... which overall is increasingly not seeing in their favor.
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  14. Price deflation creates a similar dilemma of tanking demand tanking employment. It's a death spiral with no harmless way out.
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  15. It'd be bad for all wealth transfers, that's why at least in America it'd only start to apply at estates worth more than most small businesses.
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  16. "Submission" is in the name though, which justifies submission to men who claim to have a closer connection to God/Allah yet unfortunately are still human. It's not uniquely Islamic, but characteristic of religious societies in any form.
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  17. The Golden Age of Islam ended ironically when Islamic dogma began to dominate Fertile Crescent commerce and politics.
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  18. Right, why are so many Americans buying premium airline seats to get to famous vacation spots when they supposedly can't afford groceries nowadays?
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  19. Even the "1.4 billion" figure is propaganda. Independent estimates put China's population at like 1.0 billion, average late middle-aged and shrinking... and that's the optimistic end.
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  20. Putting a estimated date makes it inaccurate and reduces the trustworthiness of the report. What's important is the trends that indicate mortal challenges to a China that keeps trying to enforce a stale artificial "harmony" in an environment that's really more complex and chaotic. Remember the USSR was considered extremely strong even as its developments stalled in the 1970s, and Berliners widely thought the Wall would never come down into the year that it did.
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