Comments by "Peter Jacobsen" (@pjacobsen1000) on "China Update"
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The gaming crackdown appears to be an important part of Xi's philosophy around 'economic development': Xi wants to advance 'the real economy', i.e. physical products that you can export or build, or which can tangibly improve people's lives, like a shovel, or a railway, or a woolen sweater. The online economy seems 'unreal' to Xi, or fake, or empty. This is the case with gaming, social media, streaming, etc. Frankly, I think it smells of 'old man yelling at cloud', not least because the online industries combined generate trillions of dollars every year globally.
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I was a little surprised, too, but it is likely because a very large percentage of private enterprises are made up of small factories in the interior, small retail businesses, and restaurants. Those enterprises tend to employ mostly rural employees with low educational attainment. State-owned enterprises and government organs tend to hire better educated people.
Those who work in large and famous private enterprises, like Alibaba, Tencent, Lenovo, BYD, etc., probably have a much higher salary, but they are, after all, only a small minority of the labor pool.
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Shimao seems to be selling some of their best properties, including Shimao International on Shanghai's Nanjing Rd, next to People's Square. I contains a Le Meridien 5-star hotel on a long-term lease + a shopping mall, so decent revenue should be guaranteed. It truly is prime real estate.
(Le Meridien is a high-end hotel chain originally owned by Air France, then UK-based Forte Group, then Granada, then Compass Group, then Nomura Holdings, then Lehman Brothers, then Starwood, and finally Marriott).
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A little unusual in 2008, but 20 years earlier it would have been commonplace in that part of China. Not so further north, though. I went to a fresh market (wet market) in Guangzhou in 1988 and it was a virtual zoo. Dogs, cranes, turtles, snakes, pigeons, quails, pheasants, raccoons, everything alive and ready to be butchered and chopped up. My friend and I actually ordered raccoon for lunch later. Quite tasty, gamey, and in the Chinese tradition, boney.
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Well, over the next 25 years, there will be 200 million couples (potential couples, if they match up) coming of age who may be prospective buyers of a home. Not all of them will be moving to/living in urban areas, but perhaps 75% will, or 150 million couples. At the same time, approximately 200 million couples will pass away after a long life. Only about 40% of those own property in urban areas, or about 80 million apartments. This adds up to a potential need for 70 million new apartments over 25 years. There are currently around 30 million apartments available (unsold plus sold but empty). This ends up giving a rough estimate of 40 million new apartments needed over 25 years, or 16 million needed per decade. So, the first two decades are covered by available supply, plus a little extra. Only by 2042 will we begin to see a real shortage again. After 2055, there will be so many old people passing away and leaving apartments behind, and so few children being born, that the need for more apartments is negligible.
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Re. Land subsidence: I've lived in shanghai since the mid-90s. Even back then, the local media regularly talked about land subsidence. The article referenced in the video mentions that Shanghai has sunk 3 meters (10 feet) over the last 100 years. And yet, Shanghai suffers much less from flooding incidents now than it did in the past. This all goes to show that despite land subsidence (which is real) or rising sea levels (which are also real), human ingenuity and hard work can easily mitigate the impacts of these environmental threats. Whether Shanghai or The Netherlands, we have not only arrested flooding events, but in both places we have actually reclaimed even more useful land from the surrounding sea. Every year, Shanghai grows bigger and bigger by preventing the silt of the Yangzi River from flowing into to the ocean and instead using it to build up land. The land where Pudong Airport, Shanghai's main international airport, is located was under water just 30 years ago. 1300 years ago, just around the end of the Tang Dynasty, all of Shanghai was just a swampy marsh.
So yes, nature keeps giving us problems, but our engineers are pretty damn good at solving those same problems.
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"In order to have a strong economy, first, you must convince the people and the world, that one has a strong economy." While this may sound a little wacky, it harks back to Chairman Mao, who said something to the effect of "The masses can accomplish anything, as long as they have the correct political ideas, and the correct guidance". We can take this even further back to Karl Marx, who, many years after publishing his theories was both surprised and disappointed that the workers had not yet started a revolution and overthrown the capitalists. He concluded that the working class simply did not have the intellectual capacity to understand his wonderful ideas, not even stopping to consider that perhaps the working class HAD thought about his ideas but decided instead to keep their jobs and fight for better working conditions by setting up labor unions.
One could almost reach the conclusion that Marx, Lenin and Mao were the ones who had the least confidence in the working class they claim to represent.
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I'll try to give an answer. There is no official list of tiered cities, so people will often disagree.
-First tier: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen
-Second Tier: Other major cities, especially along the coast: Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Ningbo, Xiamen, and some major provincial capitals in the interior
-Third tier: Large cities in the interior, including many provincial capitals
-Fourth tier: County seats and smaller cities, though in the Chinese context, they may still have a population of 1-4 million.
Another way to look at it, used to be popular in the expat community:
-First tier: Has tons of international brands and Shake Shack, Burger King, Starbuck's, McD's, KFC
-Second tier: Has Starbuck's, McD's, KFC
-Third tier: Has McD's, KFC
-Fourth tier: Only has KFC
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@naguoning "Of course in China BYD is slapping VW." Not quite. VW and BYD sales are neck and neck for 2023, with each having sold just about 3 million vehicles, including both EV and gas cars.
I live in Shanghai, and we certainly see a lot of Chinese EVs, incl. BYD, but there are also still a lot of the old brands being sold: VW, BMW, Toyota, GM, Hyundai, etc. These are all popular and respected brands in China, and people like to buy them (still). There is no indication that Chinese people have suddenly decided to reject western brands.
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Hey Bob, I'm in Shanghai under lock-down. Generally speaking, people set up 'shopping groups' online within the community. Food can be delivered, but due to lack of personnel, they only accept bulk deliveries. As an example, I volunteered for a shipment of fresh vegetables a few days ago. We ordered 90+ boxes of mixed vegetables. It took 2 days to get all buyers together and collect money, then 2 days before the goods were delivered. My volunteering consisted of receiving and distributing the goods together with two other residents. We all had to suit up in protective clothing and all boxes were disinfected. It took about an afternoon.
There are shopping groups for all sorts of things: Toilet paper, soft drinks, meat, condiments, etc. My community is 99.7% Chinese, so we don't expect bulk buys of anything Western (butter, coffee, cream, cheese, etc).
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Re. Rahm Emanuel:
1) We know him as campaign manager during Obama's initial run for president in 2008, and as Mayor of Chicago, and in both jobs he was known to be quite, er, outspoken. So it could just be his personality coming out.
2) I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is possible that the new Biden admin said "Let's have our own wolf warrior. Not in China, but in a nearby country that is known for having a contentious relationship with China, and then let him rip". It's better to have the US ambassador in China be the 'good cop', developing a friendly relationship, and the 'bad cop' in nearby Japan, spouting mad criticisms. It seems to work well so far, and I'm not sure China knows what to do about it.
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@recondax Sure, you are free to use any number you prefer. Regarding basing population numbers on salt consumption, you would first need to know how much salt the average person eats. I don't think there's any data on that, and it might even be impossible to get such data.
If we use your preferred numbers, then we have to use them in other fields, too. That means China's per capita GDP is not $13,000 but $20,000. It also means that China's Total Fertility Rate is not 1.1, but closer to 1.7, higher than even the US, and that would mean a much slower population decline than currently assumed.
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@drdiabeetus4419 "they could be taking the real numbers and inflating them to the same degree as the population". Yes, that is true, but there are some numbers that are verifiable, among them trade figures. Those figures come to light on both sides of the trade equation. Both the buying country and the selling country keeps track of this. So we can be pretty sure that China's trade figures are relatively accurate.
So if GDP is only half of what the Chinese say, but trade figures are what we see, that would mean that China's annual GDP growth is twice what we're being told, ie. 10% rather than 5%. China had a trade surplus of $1 trillion (verifiable numbers) in 2024, so if their GDP is only $9.5 trillion, it would mean growth is 10.5%.
Many other figures are verifiable: Agricultural imports, oil and gas imports, etc. If China's population is so low, they would be consuming twice the amount of calories/capita we are being told, and burn twice the amount of fuel/capita we're being told, both of which would indicate a very wealthy economy.
You simply cannot make up your own numbers without it skewing the picture somewhere else. You MUST be able to make all the numbers fit into a bigger equation.
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@DuxSupremus "So China is already cultivating more land than the US is. "
I think you may be misreading the numbers:
USA
Total area (metric, I'm European): 9.8 million sqkm. of which 16.8% is arable. Of the arable land 44.5% is farmland, which gives
Arable: 1.64 million sqkm
Farmed: 0.73 million sqkm
China
9.6 million sqkm. of which 11.3% is arable. Of the arable land 54.7% is farmland
Arable: 1.08 million sqkm
Farmed: 0.59 million sqkm
So the total farmed area in China is 80% the size of that in the US.
In any case, the population of China has always been very large, because even in ancient times, they were able to feed a very large population. This is due to the very fertile soil and good climate conditions in China. The US obviously also has excellent soil, but not quite as good climate. Yet, the US could easily feed a population twice or three times its current size.
As for China, 1.4 billion is probably surpassing the point at which the land is not longer able to feed its population, so there's no doubt they have problems.
Communists have always had an obsession with self-sufficiency. They were very focused on that in USSR, and today in N. Korea, China, Cuba, etc. There's a certain level of paranoia inherent in communism, especially in relation to food, as if they are constantly worried that other countries will not want to trade with them.
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Re. The AI wave: It is possible that one or two AI giants will eventually emerge, but it is equally possible that it will all fizzle out like so often before: Many years ago, when media in the US started talking about nano-tech and nano materials, the word 'nano' suddenly started popping up everywhere in China. Supermarket shelves would be stocked with nano-toothpaste, nano-shampoo and nano-socks, and more companies would start subsidiaries with the word nano in their name. That eventually all came to nothing. Later, when Bill Gates mentioned the 'Internet of Things', everything became about IoT for a number of years, and now we no longer hear much about that, either.
In the end, the success of Chinese AI ChatGPT, at least as a consumer application, will depend on whether they can monetize it, and whether they can make it popular. Time will tell, but I am a little skeptical.
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