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

  1.  @skydragon23101979  Why wouldn't Chinese parts pass air worthiness tests? In any case, the C919 may be a good aircraft. Let's see how many COMAC can produce in 2023, and then in 2024.
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  2.  @skydragon23101979  "I see real competition 5-10 years time". Hey, it's possible, who knows? But Brazil's Embraer has been making passenger aircraft for decades now. They have a slice of the market for smaller single-aisle planes. I think they're COMAC's main competitor for the time being.
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  3.  @skydragon23101979  "Why should US govt pass c919 air worthiness and create competition and same for Europe?" I guess for the same reason they have issued/accepted certificates for each other's aircraft, and for Embraer's aircraft, and Bombardier, and Ilyushin, and Tupolev.
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  4.  @skydragon23101979  That's not a bad idea. With Embraer's expertise and China's manufacturing prowess, that could be a very beneficial partnership for both parties. They should get started as soon as possible.
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  5. Purely anecdotally, I know of IT companies that offer RMB 300,000/year ($45,000) starting salary, but that is partly because they want to choose from the top 10% of graduates of the top 10% of universities.
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  6. Very dramatic!
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  7.  @discursion  Ah, no, I can see that. That is much lower than I expected. I thought it would be a very desirable area, so close to the lake.
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  8. "Best estimates". Frankly, that seems way off. Where do those birth- and death records come from? In order to have anyone believe those extraordinary claims, you need to provide some pretty strong evidence. If you're right, what does that say about China's housing sector? China's automobile sector? It would mean that home ownership and car ownership rates are twice what the government says. It means that GDP/capita is twice what the government says. It means that the Total Fertility Rate is twice what demographers say, meaning 2.2 children per woman rather than 1.1. If you estimate that the current population is only 700 million, how do you account for all the other numbers?
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  9.  @DeMews  "Someone here on YT said it could be as low as 300M". And does that make it true? I could say there are only 2 million people in China, but without any data to support that, no one should be so naive as to believe it.
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  10.  @GARYGUYTON-c7i  "How reliable are those figures? at lot of issues with official PRC stats.". Certainly, I agree with that. But any other proposed number MUST have some data to support it. Otherwise, it's just something people pull out of their ass.
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  11.  @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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  12.  @modeus5914  "lies?". Sure there are lies, but just because someone lies, doesn't mean you can then substitute their lies for your own lies. You MUST have supporting data.
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  13.  @DeMews  Ok, YouTubers say all kinds of stuff without evidence, but you will never hear a serious economist make these types of claims without having some strong evidence to support those claims. If you are skeptical about the Chinese government's numbers, which you should be, you do yourself a service by being skeptical about other people's numbers, too.
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  14. Interesting! I don't get a context warning when I watch China Update.
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  15.  @eurospec  Sounds like it.
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  16. I feel sorry for Sun Hung Kai which is building that massive office/shopping mall complex in Xujiahui. They're putting a lot of money into that project. Right next door, Grand Gateway seems awfully quiet these days.
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  17.  @loot6  I agree.
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  18. I wrote another comment about this, but I have no expertise in the area. What yields of 7nm chips do you think they get on their 28 nm machines? 80% 70%?
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  19.  @dcc70  "you're taking a big risk." Not really. Western people like me have been here for many years. Getting screwed over by the authorities does happen, but it is extremely rare. But I suppose you could say the same about swimming: Sometimes people do get killed by sharks, but has that prevented you from going to the beach?
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  20.  @dcc70  Certainly there are sharks in the waters surrounding Taiwan and Singapore, though Singapore doesn't have many good beaches. Singaporeans go to Malaysia and Thailand for the beach, but they both also have sharks. In any case, few, if any, foreigners who live in China do so because they support the local government or the political system. That includes people like Tony and myself. But we are also not too concerned about getting 'disappeared'.
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  21.  @dcc70  I understand, so I got back to the original argument toward the end.
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  22.  @dcc70  Thank you.
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  23.  @AutoTrawler  My comment was partly in jest. After all, in a first tier city like Shanghai, prices are still going up, and will likely continue. During and after the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008, housing prices in Manhattan continued to go up. Some places always have a long line of people hoping to get in.
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  24.  @willywonka4340  "one naval blockade by a foreign adversary can end these countries". Yes, that's probably true, but it would be pretty hard to blockade a large country like China. Can we please try to be realistic, rather than engage in fantasies?
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  25.  @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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  26.  @billfrehe6620  " A naval blockade of China would be quite easy". As I'm sure you know, China has a very large navy, a very large coastal patrol force, a very large marine militia, and a very large merchant fleet, in addition to a coastline more than 3500 km long. Blockading such a country would not be easy by any means, even if all western naval powers join forces.
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  27.  @billfrehe6620  Your feelings of amusement notwithstanding, even the Pentagon realizes the dangerous size and capabilities of the Chinese military. Fortunately, they are not as dismissive as you, but take the situation seriously.
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  28. 40,000 or 4 million, it doesn't really matter in the long run. Since the vast majority of deaths from Covid are older people, they would have died in the next 10-20 years anyway. They are also not big consumers or producers. Sorry, but old people are not the main drivers of a country's economy or development. Yes, it's a little cold-hearted to say that, but it's a fact.
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  29. Unlikely. In China, as elsewhere, most of the people dying from Covid will have been elderly people. Elderly people don't consume much even when they're alive.
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  30.  @markbernier8434  "There is data that suggests the population has been considerably overstated for years". Could you direct me to that data? I keep hearing people mentioning this, but I have been unable to find any underlying data.
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  31.  @grahamelliott9506  "their population would halve about 2075". This is a more reasonable estimate. "they have over counted their census by 100m". I know some people are saying that, particularly the U. Wisconsin Obstetrician Yi Fuxian, but there is no evidence for his numbers. They are just speculation. The rest of the trends you mention are correct, and they will most likely lead to a halving of the population by the 2070s, not by 2050. In 2050 there will still be around 1.2 Billion. Put the numbers in a spreadsheet and make your own calculation, as I have done.
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  32.  @grahamelliott9506  "china's population halves from its peak in the next 3 to 5 decades". 5 decades, maybe 6. It's math.
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  33. Well, there's CGTN, that's pretty pro-China. You can try that. It's good to get different points of view.
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  34. I believe that falls away after Jan. 8. They may even begin to take applications for tourist visas come spring. That'll be a first in 3 years.
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  35. All the comments below mention unemployment. My comment was not about unemployment, but only about educational attainment rate.
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  36. For people interested in an alternative view, there is a very interesting, and recent, lecture by economist and professor Arthur Kroeber, NYU, given Sep. 22 at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies @ Harvard U. It has a somewhat different conclusion from we normally see here on China Update, but it is accompanied by lots of data. A very interesting perspective. https://youtu.be/LnXVzcgllrE?si=A_Xb4MGTONvu-6vz (Also a good recording where the camera zooms in on the slides rather than the speaker; the opposite is too often the case). (The Fairbank Center is named after John King Fairbank, an eminent historian every China observer is familiar with)
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  37.  @tonysu8860  The US' trade restrictions are, at least in part, due to China's mercantilist policies. Eventually, trade partners are going to to resist always buying and never selling. I think you're going to see this with the EU soon, as well.
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  38. Meanwhile, Xi is giving a speech at Bo'ao Forum indicating things are going well. https://youtu.be/tT0yFnghsjw
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  39.  @josephsanchez5396  "we won't know which side is actually correct for several years". That is certainly a statement we can agree on. I think we also agree that China's economy will eventually decline, I just think it won't happen until the 2040s.
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  40. I find these new background visuals to be distracting.
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  41. So far, I don't think there's any indication of that, but it doesn't hurt to be vigilant. I think it's just as likely that China, like a snail, will slowly retract into its shell as the headwinds increase.
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  42. So the primary reason for international resistance to the Chinese vision of the future world order is not that there's anything wrong with it. It's just that China hasn't communicated it clearly enough. As soon as they do that, the rest of the world will cheer them on. Does that sound to anyone else like evangelism? (I'm here to spread the good news).
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  43. 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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  44. The Saudis can spend their excess RMB on crab meat xiaolongbao. You can never have too many of those.
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  45.  @simontang5487  "Are the Chinese Middle-Class going to rebound?" Probably not all of them, but like in other countries, many of them have quite stable jobs and can maintain a high standard of living for decades going forward. Of course some will perish and others will join them, and the growth in numbers of middle- and upper middle class people will likely slow considerably. But 100 million, give or take, high spenders is still a substantial amount.
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  46.  @Will_Smith_Slapping_Xi_Jinping  One of their contributors may not be familiar to you, but is very familiar to people who have followed China for decades: Willy Wo-Lap Lam. For many years, especially in the 90s and 00s, he was the foremost expert on the inner workings of the CCP. He had some excellent connections inside the Party, but since 2013, it has become increasingly hard for him, or anyone else, to get connected to any insiders. The door is now shut. But he still writes good analyses based on public sources. His column is called 'Willy's Corner'. Also check out his wikipedia page.
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  47.  @stefanyuwono1909  Mao, of course, did not follow a former leader of the CPC. I stand by my opinion.
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  48.  @antb9521  You say you agree it 'looked planned', but just to be clear, that is NOT what I am suggesting.
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  49.  @markwalker8374  That's for sure, and the elevators are much welcomed!
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  50.  @andy.8444  That's true, but I think China was aware, as are many other emerging economies, that an auto industry is a great way to grow the economy in the early/middle stages. So, good for the economy, but bad for us cyclists.
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