Youtube hearted comments of Peter Jacobsen (@pjacobsen1000).

  1. From the 90s and onwards, Russian vacuum tubes became quite popular in the audiophile community worldwide, with manufacturers like Electron and Sovtek being very well received.
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  2. My prediction: Apart from the airport, none of these projects will ever be realized. But they make for great headlines.
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  3. When I traveled across Sumatra in 1989, it REALLY was mostly rainforest. Now, it's mostly palm oil plantations. We might decry that, but the palm oil industry has been very good for Indonesia's economic development. Going forward, I hope they find a good balance between economic development and protection of their natural habitat. I think this new highway will be a great help for Indonesia.
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  4. Hey Tony, please consider for the next several episodes to give us a small bio for each of the new Standing Committee members, incl. educational and career background. It would be nice to know how many are economists and how many are engineers.
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  5. Wow, only an hour after posting the video there are so many 'investment' spammers in the comments. And what is this 'AMZ11VR' they're promoting? Ah, a quick Google search says it is some kind of crypto-scam. Not very surprising.
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  6. I just extended my apartment lease with my Shanghainese landlord. Normally, I extend for two years at a time, but he said "Let's just do one year this time, in case something happens". I didn't ask what he meant, but it is an anecdotal indication that Chinese people may be getting a little worried about the future.
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  7. Everybody I know in Shanghai share the same sentiment: Things are not going well.
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  8. I can attest to Shanghai seemingly improving. Lots of restaurants and shops were closed or had limited opening hours in the 2nd half of December, but now they appear to all be open again. The city is looking more and more like its old self.
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  9. From Shanghai: My residential community was put under lock-down this morning before 6:00 AM. As is par for the course, this happened without warning. No one can leave or enter for at least 48 hours, but we can order food online for delivery. It's the first time I experience this, and I admit I already find it very annoying. I saw an ambulance come to take somebody away, but as there is a large number of old people in this community, it could have been for another health reason (there are so many old people in this community that ambulances show up a couple of times per month on average).
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  10. Shanghai Lock-down: I'm on the Puxi side and tried to go out today to stock up on food. People are hoarding, shelves are practically empty, especially veggies are hard to find. I did get some spaghetti and canned tuna. I'm going to try Carrefour tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
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  11. I just had dinner here in Shanghai in a small restaurant. So small that people have to share a table with strangers. I met a young, local couple, both working in finance. I asked the guy if he thought the market had hit bottom, and he said that in his company, consensus is that the outlook is negative for the remainder of this year. We also touched on trade and I mentioned that Europe and the US are very concerned about Chinese over capacity and cheap products threatening the west's industrial base. They didn't say much, but both nodded thoughtfully, as in they understood the predicament we're all in. It's going to be tough times moving forward. (Most of our conversation was about travel and food. You gotta lift the mood sometimes.)
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  12. Infrastructure projects I would like to see (as a resident of China), but which probably won't happen: -More bicycle paths -Dig wires and cables underground -Renovate older housing with insulation for energy conservation -More wind and solar power (though they are already in the process of massive green energy build-out) -Make cities more pedestrian friendly -More nuclear energy plants (this one IS likely to happen) -Sleeper trains on more high-speed tracks
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  13. Great work as usual, Tony! I would love to see a video where you break down all the stimulus done so far this year, incl. from central and local govts.
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  14. Shanghai, Puxi: My community got locked down at 1 PM today. They had found a positive case inside so we're starting 2 days early. Nobody could say exactly what the situation will be going forward, but one guy told me it could be a 14-day lock-down. I only prepared food for 4-6 days, so after that it'll be a 'Communist Fast' (a government orchestrated, but unintentional famine). Maybe I'll publish the results in a lifestyle/wellness magazine.
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  15. There are still lots of elderly people in China who use cash exclusively. Many of them find it hard to grapple with modern technology. Younger people, like Tony (and myself), tend to only use electronic payments.
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  16. "Apologies, there's some construction near my room". This comment brings a smile to my face. Urban life in China has been like this for over 25 years: There's always construction nearby.
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  17. Hello from Shanghai. I was given an 'exit pass' Friday (May 20) and additionally, two 'entry passes' to two out of three supermarkets that are open in my area. It was great to get out for the first time in months. The line for the better supermarket was an hour long, but it was worth it. I got most of what I needed. From now on, I should be able to go out when I want, though we're advised that exiting the community should be for necessary purposes only, such a buying food. Still, though, almost nothing is open. On my street everything is closed.
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  18. Hello from Shanghai. This is just from my local neighborhood: Local vegetable market has been closed for several days, but most shops and restaurants are open. McD's only allows pick-up. Last night people in hazmat suits banged on my door and then handed out self-testing kits; first time I've tried that. My community is open. Streets look normal. Delivery of packages and food only to community main gate.
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  19. People should go to SCMP and read the whole interview with Richard Koo. It's a good one.
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  20. Great issue. Always nice to hear the opinions of Singapore's leaders.
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  21. We already have a high-speed railway line going Shanghai-Jiangsu-Anhui (Hefei). I've traveled on this twice. According to China Daily, the new line will go Shanghai-Suzhou-Wuxi-Changzhou-Zhenjiang-Nanjing. Not much different from the other one.
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  22. The whole thing is so mind-boggling, it's like trying to understand the size of the universe: The human mind seems to be lagging reality.
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  23. Blizzard, -53 F, cold war, all in the same video. Coincidence? Someone is getting cold feet.
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  24. Report from Shanghai: My office building has been shut down for the week and we're all working from home. My residential community, which is in a different district, will offer nucleic acid tests tomorrow (Tuesday). It's not mandatory I think, but a negative result will give me the freedom to go more places. Otherwise, the city seems normal, people on the street shopping, etc.
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  25. Hello from Shanghai. We truly live in interesting times. Let's see how it all pans out. 5.3% for 2022 may end up being difficult, or perhaps only achievable with major government investments.
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  26. What a pleasure it is to stumble upon such a high quality historical documentary as this one! I'm subscribing!
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  27. Thanks for this excellent episode, Tony. Even though I follow China closely, and have been for over 30 years, I rarely see other outlets discussing ideological issues as in-depth as you did here. Even Willy Wo-Lap Lam rarely goes this deep.
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  28. Top notch edition!
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  29. I'm in Puxi, too. A kind of apathetic acceptance seems to have set in, but I'm entertaining thoughts of all Shanghai residents suddenly deciding enough is enough and all just leave their compounds simultaneously.
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  30. Latest news re. Global Times, from SCMP: Hu Xijin will retire immediately as editor-in-chief, but will continue to write the occasional opinion piece. Global Times is largely his creation, so this is a big deal. No indication he has been forced to retire, though. I think he's 64.
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  31. A-shares in the Chinese context is a type of share only tradable by Chinese citizens and only traded on the mainland exchanges. B-shares are open to both foreign and domestic investors. A-shares tend to be mostly large state owned corporations. There are also H-shares. Those are Chinese mainland corporations traded on the Hong Kong exchange. Those are open to everyone.
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  32.  @sayamalu2495  "Puxi starts from 1st April." Really? All of it? God, I don't want to go through another lock-down.
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  33. Peter Hessler is one of the best chroniclers of contemporary China at a human scale, rather than at a state-level scale. I strongly recommend his books on China to everyone: 'River Town', 'Oracle Bones', 'Country Driving', all great, great books! His wife's book 'Factory Girls' is also excellent.
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  34. Greetings from Shanghai. Still healthy, but expecting to get infected any day now.
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  35. 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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  36. Excellent episode!
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  37. 1:18 "GDP in 2022 was 1.2 trillion yuan". That has got to be a mistake. Perhaps 120 trillion?
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  38. Presumably only people in the Americas. Here in Asia, his videos are published in the evening.
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  39. Great episode!
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  40. Excellent update, as usual. An observation from the ground here in Shanghai: We're seeing an increase in government investment in 'Common Prosperity' infrastructure projects here, among them early beginnings of installation of elevators in the thousands of 'public housing' neighborhoods, 6-story walk-ups built in the 80s and 90s that make up around a third of all housing in Shanghai. This will be popular with the aging middle class that occupy these apartments (or flats, as you'd say), it will provide jobs for construction companies and local elevator manufacturers, but perhaps it also illustrates how difficult it is becoming to find projects with good, or any, return on investment. There's also a fair bit of commercial office space being developed in my area, but it seems to fill up very slowly.
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  41.  @ChinaUpdate  Thanks, Tony. BTW, your city of Ningbo, would you categorize that as 2nd or 3rd tier? Sometimes I feel like Hangzhou should be considered a 1st tier city, but there doesn't seem to be clear divisions.
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  42. Yes, pretty steamy in Shanghai today. 40 degrees. At 7:30 PM it was still 38.
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  43. I stayed in XinJie for one night about 10 years ago. Saw one set of terraces in the afternoon and two more the next morning. I also had to stay in town because I rode my bicycle up from NanSha, the county seat at the foot of the mountain, and I was exhausted. Neither XinJie nor Lüchun (briefly mentioned in the video) are themselves very interesting. It's the stunning mountain scenery that surround and connect them that is absolutely worth a trip (and yes, the best experience is on a bicycle).
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  44. While there may not be many Americans on Fudan University campus these days, thousands of Americans and other foreigners have studied at Fudan University over the last 40 years, including me.
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  45. Re.: Shanghai. I received an 'exit pass' today and left my community for the first time in almost two months. Went to a nice supermarket, got some coffee beans, butter, cheese. It was amazing! "Freedom, freedom, freeedom, woooooaaaahhhhh, freedooooooom" (Aretha Franklin)
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  46. 4:50 "60% of people aged 16-24 had no more than a high school education". Ok, but let's remember that people don't graduate high school until they're 18-19 years old, and they don't get a college degree until they're 22-24, so even if everybody ends up getting a college degree you would still only have 67% who have graduated high school and at most 10-20% who have graduated college. So those numbers don't sound that alarming. Edit: Oops, I jumped the gun and didn't hear the next sentence: "Excluding people currently enrolled in school, 70 only have a high school degree". Well, still not such bad numbers as again, within that age cohort, only about 67% are old enough to have graduated high school.
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  47. Great episode, which brought me to the Sinification Substack. Much reading to be done.
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  48. Yes, I would strongly recommend you buy a lot of food to prepare, so you don't end up like us down here in Shanghai.
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  49. Another excellent video from Asianometry!
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  50. Wow, that was a thorough investigation! Well done, Type Ashton.
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  51. If you include all the individual components, there are probably thousands of steps in putting a smart phone together. Amazing that we can buy one for a few hundred dollars.
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  52. Thanks for the update. Let's see what happens.
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  53. The last 20 second clip looks like it could have been taped in yesterday's Shanghai, with its cold, rainy, windy, grey weather.
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