Comments by "Peter Jacobsen" (@pjacobsen1000) on "China Update" channel.

  1.  @mindpuzzle81  As for moving production out, I've been thinking that we will see an S-curve: First a trickle, then mass movement, followed by the last stragglers. Of course, some production will stay if it makes business sense, e.g. serving the local market.
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  2. 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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  3. It depends. Downtown areas 2nd hand homes are around RMB 100,000/sqm (USD 1,400/Sqft), but if you go out to the suburbs at the end of the metro line, prices can be as low as RMB 25,000/sqm (USD 350/Sqft). Average income in 1st tier cities is around RMB 150,000/year (USD 23,000). So one year income can buy you 16 sqft downtown, or 65sqft in the suburbs.
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  4.  @stage6fan475  I don't really understand the situation now. Friends of mine get all their movies as Torrent files, but I don't know how common that is and I'm too old to get into the whole torrent thing. Some years ago, they cracked down on DVD copies and I think those shops are all gone now. It used to be a lot more fun around here, with police stations right next to black market DVD stores and brothels. Perhaps a clean-up was needed, but it's become a little too clean now, more suitable for a retirement home.
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  5. Goldman Sachs mentions the decline in workforce growth, but there is a simultaneous negative growth in consumers, which may have an even bigger impact.
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  6. Isn't that a rather exclusive neighborhood? Big old mansions and the Shangri La Hotel.
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  7. Considering there are only 14.5 million people aged 23, 11.5 million university graduates is an astonishingly high number (79% of all in that age bracket). Of course, some might be a little older or younger, but those numbers are similar.
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  8. Excellent episode!
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  9. I've never been to YiWu and I didn't know they had such good Turkish and Lebanese food. But we don't hear much about YiWu anymore, unlike in the 2000s when it was constantly in the news as China's 'trinket town' (sorry for the contemptuous attitude, but I'm in Shanghai, so it should be expected).
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  10.  @MrToubrouk  Well, alarming for those unfortunate enough to have bought their shares. And you could say that in a healthier construction sector, they would probably have been fine. But now those with shaky legs will fall, and only the strongest will survive. We're already seeing similar things happening in the EV sector.
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  11. 1:18 "GDP in 2022 was 1.2 trillion yuan". That has got to be a mistake. Perhaps 120 trillion?
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  12. This channel is about China, not American domestic politics.
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  13. That's highly unlikely. Water borne diseases include typhoid, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis, but not respiratory illnesses. It's almost in the name that respiratory illnesses are airborne.
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  14. Well, Q1 4.5% is reasonably good growth. Different media outlets will focus on either the good numbers or the bad numbers. There is certainly no shortage of economic challenges in China, but I think the reality is that China's economy is no longer booming, nor is it collapsing, it is just slowing down. My prediction is that by 2030 we will see annual growth numbers between 2 and 3%.
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  15. Re. Hu Jintao: I agree with the 'bad health' hypothesis. A public purge of an old, former leader is very out of style of the CPC. It also goes squarely against Confucian ethics, upon which much of Chinese culture is based. Deliberately humiliating an old man and former national leader is not something I would expect to see, anywhere, anytime.
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  16. 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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  17. I found my apartment through Lianjia. They have a good search system. In my understanding it is a franchise type company where individual realtors can join. I know nothing of their financials.
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  18. Well, let's see. I'm European and have been following this incident. The ship is in international waters and it is unlikely it will allow itself to be examined. Without proof, there is not much we can do.
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  19. How much are they down? A ball park figure is fine. I think many manufacturers are really tightening their belts, and selling product at close to cost.
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  20. I've noticed that China's imports always trails exports but generally follow the same trajectory. I'm guessing this is because many of the imports are components that get re-exported as parts in finished products. I'd be curious to know how many imports stay in China (like wine and whisky, handbags, soybeans, Swiss watches, etc.).
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  21. Re. US chip imports: I'm looking at the chart and am puzzled that imports from Taiwan are relatively small. My conclusion is that the country the chip is imported from (in the chart) is not necessarily the 'fabbing' country, but rather the packaging country, thus big exporters like Cambodia that don't have any fabrication plants of their own.
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  22.  @joaodecarvalho7012  I think one of them is 'ChinaObserver', another is 'ChinaInsights'. Not sure who is behind those two channels, though I suspect it might be FaLunGong. The video in question, from today, mostly discusses demolitions of neighborhoods in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Urban development down south has generally been different from further north.
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  23. It's a little different for people who exclusively direct their voice at a foreign audience. Think of Michael Pettis who sits up in Beijing, just outside the 4th ring road, and makes one negative prediction after another. Should the political situation deteriorate, Michael Pettis and Tony are more likely to just have their visa extensions denied, and even that is not likely to happen in the current climate.
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  24. Presumably only people in the Americas. Here in Asia, his videos are published in the evening.
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  25. Regarding trusting statistics/data: People might have a good reason to distrust data from some countries (eg. China). Nothing wrong with that, it is always good to preserve a healthy amount of skepticism. However, if you only distrust the positive numbers but trust the negative numbers, then it is not the numbers that are the problem, it is you. Unfortunately, I feel we see this more and more, not just with respect to China: People simply choosing to trust the data that support their preconceived ideas, and distrust the data that go against those ideas. That is not how a rational mind works, nor does it help you understand the world better. We should be openminded enough to let in new ideas, but not so openminded that our brains fall out.
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  26. Yes, it is usually in early October, but final dates are usually not published until a few weeks before. It's considered an internal party meeting, so informing the public is not a priority.
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  27.  @skydragon23101979  The ability to make some things does not mean the ability to make everything.
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  28. Interesting data. Here in Shanghai, the registered cases say 90-95% asymptomatic. Xinhua News Agency says today that Shanghai has 9 severe cases which is around 0.1% of symptomatic cases. Approximate cases for Shanghai since March 30: -Total asymptomatic: 250,000 -Total Symptomatic: 11,000 -Total severe cases: 9 -total deaths: 0 (though several people in an elderly care facility died, but the news reports that they died because the care staff got Covid and were put in quarantine, thus leaving the elderly without care. In my view, that's even worse than dying from Covid).
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  29. Last time India had a larger population than China was before 500 AD. That's a good while ago.
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  30. We're now 5 months into the year and the picture is quite clear: No massive rebound, but also no collapse. Seems to me that going forward, 'natural' growth will lie around 3-3.5%. Whatever target is set will have to be made up by govt. investments.
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  31. Great episode!
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  32.  @joesmith9139  As the video mentioned, Shanghai is such an important city that closing it all down at the same time could have very deleterious effects on the whole country. Secondly, Shanghai is neatly divided by a river, so in principle, you can treat it as two separate areas. How it works in practice is a different matter, since the two parts are connected by 5 bridges, 15 road tunnels, 1 pedestrian tunnel, 14 cross-river ferries and 13 metro lines.
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  33. It's not quite that many and I'd be interested to know where you got those figures from. I think there are around 330 million housing units in China, of which around 300 million are occupied by 900 million people, leaving 500 million people in rural areas (rural houses aren't counted as part of the housing market, for a variety of reasons). Of the 330 million housing units, about 180 million were built in the last 24 years, with the remaining 150 million existing from before 2000. About 30 million units are either unfinished or finished but unoccupied. Many of those are located in 3rd and 4th tier cities, where no one wants them. Tier 1 cities have quite healthy housing markets with very little availability, but they only make up a relatively small slice of the total market.
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  34.  @ChiefBridgeFuser  Thanks for that. I see the quote is from a CNN article. It's an extreme view, and the article also mentions that there there are an estimated 7 million vacant homes, even less than I mentioned. But 7 million vacant homes is only enough for about 20 million people, a very small number when compared to the 1.4 billion people in the country. In any case, 7 million vacant homes (plus 10 million unfinished homes) is a lot, no where you are. It'll likely take 10-20 years to fill them up, and some may never get occupied because they're in towns where no one wants to live.
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  35. It's one thing to write an angry email if a graph or a data set has been misinterpreted, but to write one because reality doesn't conform to one's beliefs, that is delusional.
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  36. Balochistan = Ba-loo-chee-stan / Ba-lo-chee-stan. Those are the pronunciations I have heard.
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  37. What part of the world is your country in? China's economic challenges have been widely covered in the western press.
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  38.  @skydragon23101979  Yes, I think the 3rd and 4th tier cities and below are probably overbuilt. Not to mention the many projects built outside cities in 'vacation spots', say along the Shandong coast, or the Hainan coast. So many apartment towers there, most of which I suspect will remain empty forever. As the economy slows down, the most affected will be the lower tier cities, pushing young people to seek their fortunes in the more successful cities: The big ones. What's the term? 'Go big or go home' or something?
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  39. 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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  40. The initial clip of a panda mum and cub walking in the snow is animated/AI-generated. It looks very real, but there is something uncanny about it that gives the plot away. Impressive how far AI/animation has come.
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  41. Seem like a very reasonable assessment to me. My predictions were along the same lines.
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  42. Nice with some new drone footage in the beginning of the video, which I believe is from Erhai Lake in Yunnan. Beautiful area.
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  43. Everybody needs an enemy. Reality TV shows are based on this principle.
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  44. Are you mixing up BRICS and BRI, or have I completely missed something?
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  45. 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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  46.  @stage6fan475  Oh, forgot to answer the translation question: I believe you download Torrents with different language subtitles, but I don't know how good they are. We used to get some good laughs out of the inept translations.
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  47. They appear widespread, but actually they are not. Though it depends how bad a building has to be, to be classified as 'tofu dreg'.
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  48. Civil aircraft will be a good litmus test. China likes to play Europe and USA out against each other, but they need airplanes and only we can supply them. What are they going to do if we both make them angry?
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  49.  @zenithdawn9663  Oh yeah, I completely forgot about those "Ukrainian Bio Labs".
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  50.  @taiwanisacountry  Who is your comment addressed to? It's as if you postulate that I claim you can. I have made no such claim, quite the opposite.
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