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The long-predicted (by some) collapse in the Chinese real estate sector appears to be in full swing:Professor Patrick Chovanec posted:...Very few people paused to ask where this investment growth was actually coming from. After all, the market was clearly struggling. Year-on-year sales in Q1, for all real estate, was down -14.6%. The decline was even steeper, -17.5%, in residential property, which accounts for about 80% of the market. Office sales were down -10.2%, while growth in “commercial” (i.e., retail) property sales, which saw a boom in 2011, decelerated to +10.5%. Although many people were touting a month-on-month sales recovery in March, compared to the Chinese New Year period, March sales were still down -7.8% from the year before, for the sector as a whole, and -9.7% for residential properties (by comparison, sales in January-February were a disaster, falling -20.9% overall, compared to the first two months of 2011, -24.7% for residential). This will make the Eurozone poo poo look like an argument over who ate the last slice of pizza.
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May 17, 2012 05:06
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Modus Operandi posted:Nah the eurozone stuff is a much more serious global economic balancing of the scales of untold proportions. Entire nations are going to be affected by that for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised if the EU fractures over it because Greece, Italy, Spain, etc.. are all basket cases. The problem with your thinking is that the proportion of the Chinese economy tied up in this real estate bubble is absolutely massive. Commercial and residential construction + infrastructure projects make up a truly ridiculous proportion of their GDP, hence Chovanec's research indicating even a small decrease in real estate could reduce GDP by as much as 40% as all the secondary and tertiary spillovers grind the economy to a halt. It's not "just a property bubble", because it's driving the majority of commerce in the world's second-largest economy. It will have ramifications akin to the U.S. housing bubble, which coincidentally is what first tripped off this European adventure. As for the wider repercussions, China has been a huge source of EU bailout funds, and has continued to buy commodities at a furious rate, which is all that's kept Australia and Canada propped up to date. You could probably add Russia to that list of "countries to be hosed" if there's a real commodity rout globally. So, to summarize: China's economy grinds to a halt, bailout funds (and liquidity generally) dry up worldwide, and the global commodity market takes a massive hit as China stops wasting money and resources on totally retarded malls and highways and empty train stations. Also, if you think banking sector contagion tied to European banks is bad, wait 'till you see the list of banks holding the bag on Chinese capital investments, or counterparties to weird copper-denominated bonds etc. It's a complete shitshow.
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May 17, 2012 06:48
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Modus Operandi posted:Here's the problem I have with these apocalyptic visions of mass financial collapse. They never happen this way. Well I guess we disagree on what the definition of "mass financial collapse" is, then, because I'd absolutely say that the United States, Spain, and Ireland in the last few years are all perfect examples of what I expect to see in China. Arglebargle III posted:A small decrease in real estate... what? As written your post implies that land in China may start disappearing. A small decrease in real estate prices? Trade volume? Construction? What are we talking about here? Did... you not click the link in my post?  It explains which sectors in Chinese real estate generally are down (short answer: all of them), as well as some of the author's educated opinions on what this means for the broader Chinese economy. Clicking that link might be helpful, as it pretty much demolishes everything you said after "I have a hard time believing..." (Edit: Here's the direct link.)iceaim posted:If I'm not mistaken, didn't the Chinese government itself slam the breaks on real estate? I'm pretty sure it did. I remember reading it in the papers last year here. I wish I had a source. They did, and now they're easing a lot of those restrictions in a somewhat panicked effort to pull the economy out of a stall. The problem they faced, and still face now, is that they had to crush the real estate and construction sectors in China before it was too late, because those sectors were at the point of being driven almost entirely by rampant malinvestment and speculation. As all of the "good" capital projects (apartments people actually lived in, bridges people would actually use, etc.) were completed years ago, but all that capital sloshing around in China kept looking for places to land, and you started seeing empty train stations and the famous "ghost malls". The bad debt levels at the local government level in China and in the banking sector are truly terrifying and speak to a level of malinvestment that could quite honestly put Ireland and the U.S. to shame. People have this very simplistic view of China, namely that "There are a lot of people in China without homes, ergo you can always fill a condo in Shanghai". It's as simplistic as the idea that everyone wants to live in Miami, so property prices will always go up in Miami, etc, because it doesn't analyse any of the fundamentals below that: incomes, population growth, in-migration, local conditions, etc. The stats Chovanec cites pretty much speak for themselves. Franks Happy Place fucked around with this message at 17:23 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 17:13
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Well the confusion might stem from the fact that I deliberately left the particular noun out there because it could (logically) be any one of several interrelated aspects of real estate, and all of them would fulfil the general idea. It could be "A small decrease in real estate values", or "a small decrease in real estate transactions", or "a small decrease in real estate development", and all three would necessarily be linked to the others because of the nature of that particular economic activity. I didn't think anybody would be confused as to whether or not I was saying China is physically shrinking, so for that I'm sorry.
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May 17, 2012 18:21
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Fangz posted:WAIT STOP. That's not what the quote says. The quote says a very rough estimate says a small decrease in real estate investment would reduce GDP growth by 40%. It would not reduce GDP by 40% because that's an unthinkable cataclysm. By Chovanec's article which uses various contentious assumptions that gives estimates higher than everyone else's, real estate investment is 13% of GDP. Not 'the majority of commerce'. Do you know what a huge decrease in GDP growth would do to China? The entire basis of the CCP's political mandate can be summed up as "We won't let you vote, but we'll make you rich," and it's a deal that has held up so far as the middle class expands and the lower classes continue to believe they can move up the ladder. It's why they continue to pursue growth strategies despite massive social and environmental problems, and it's why China's stimulus response to the global credit crisis was larger than the U.S. stimulus on a per-capita basis. Saying 3.5% growth is "no big deal" is... not reflective of the reality on the ground. If Chovanec is correct (and I'm not entirely sold on his numbers, aside from being willing to admit he's called the real estate slowdown for a while before it happened), this will have massive ramifications for the country as a whole. quote:Moreover, from an economic perspective, such an idealised estimate is stupid. Money that has been pulled out from investment into real estate does not merely cease to exist. It is put into other things. Hence, you will likely see an offsetting increase in output in other sectors. I don't understand this handwave. Do you have data showing that construction, infrastructure, and real estate investments are NOT as large a component of the economy as Chovanec has said? If so, post 'em, I'm happy to read a cogent critique of his assertions. But unless you do have something like that, saying "Oh it's just one sector" seems kind of silly. Massive, disproportionate malinvestment doesn't just result in money "moving somewhere else", otherwise Ireland and Spain would be seeing a massive boom in some other new magical sector. It just results in destruction of capital, period. The allegation here is that China has kept their economy afloat despite a massive decrease in exports, largely by shunting resources into an unsustainable domestic construction boom and property bubble. What Chovanec is saying is that the tune just stopped, and now we get to see how many chairs are left. Whether or not he's correct, there is plenty of data out there to back his claims, certainly enough that they are worthy of an equally data-driven response. Calling it "no big deal" when real estate alone (ex construction) was 13 per cent of their 2011 GDP seems naive.
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May 17, 2012 19:11
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Nevermind, even.
Franks Happy Place fucked around with this message at 21:31 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 21:12
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Agrajag posted:I think most of the animosity attributed towards Japan, in China, can be attributed to this. ...what on Earth are you talking about?  While horrific, the practices of Unit 731 are pretty far down the list of "reason China hates Japan". Number one, both in Chinese propaganda efforts and in public awareness, is probably Nanjing, but that kind of devastation was replicated in numerous other cities as well (Shanghai was another bad one). Unlike the people directly affected by that one "little" experiment in inhumanity, chances are most urban Chinese in the occupied region have a family member who was acually raped/ butchered/ tortured by Japanese forces during the war. As emblematic as 731's activities are, they don't even amount to a rounding error in terms of direct victims of Japanese occupation.
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Sep 18, 2012 17:37
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Rosscifer posted:For your information, the PRC did protest furiously in the United Nations Security Council when President Nixon wrongly passed the islands to Japanese control. You are correct that the islands are "Chinese", insofar as they belong to Taiwan. Which is not part of the PRC, and hasn't been for the better part of seventy years. Hope that helps clear things up for you! 
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Sep 19, 2012 06:43
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Pro-PRC Laowai posted:Both Roc and PRC are in agreement that it's part of the Taiwan entity, however there's this tiny little sticking point wherein Taiwan is part of China and Taiwan is not really a country. Of course Taiwan is a country. It's got an army, currency, it's own multi-level government, its own bureaucracy, and its own post office, and has for nearly seven uninterrupted decades. China's claim to Taiwan is roughly in the same ballpark as an American claim to ownership of Cuba.
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Sep 19, 2012 16:36
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My experience with my college-age tutors/language buddies while I was at Qingdao University was that they were amazingly naive and immature. My tutor actually burst into tears when I told her there was a giant statue of Jiang Jieshi in downtown Taipei. It's one thing to not know they aren't "really" the PRC down there, I get that, but the reaction was something you would expect from a small child. That, and the whole sex and dating thing. Ye gods, it was like talking to a ten year old. So, that's anecdotal, but that's my experience. I should note I've also had quite sophisticated political and cultural conversations with some friends in Beijing, but they were in their mid to late 20s, and definitely upper middle class.
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Oct 2, 2012 16:51
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Kopijeger posted:Wyy did it come as a surprise to her? What do they teach PRC citizens about Jiang Jieshi and the Kuomintang these days? That he is Asian Hitler, basically. I get the cognitive dissonance for somebody who has been fed that line their entire life, especially because they don't even know Taiwan is independent and self-governing let alone that they're very proud (kind of) of That Bad Man, but to see a college-educated adult burst into hysterics just from hearing it was pretty loving impressive.
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Oct 2, 2012 18:54
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Baby Huey Newton posted:I hope this is supposed to be an inside joke. Talking to people who live in Asia, especially English teachers about Asian culture is like talking to British colonial administrators in India during the Raj. Living in a mostly isolated foreign community while being pampered and treated like an alien is the fastest way to reinforce Orientalist beliefs. Yes, I was absolutely a member of the Modern British Raj, travelling as I was by third-class rail and cheap local busses throughout the entire country, perfecting my Mandarin by yammering on with any local no-shoe-having migrant worker who wanted to chat with the crazy yangguizi sitting in Peasant Class, for the better part of a year. Clearly the ivory tower I was gazing down from gave me altitude sickness. I was the veritable Cow's Vagina. Please just shut the gently caress up already, you idiotic white-knighting smugboat. I probably have more Chinese friends from a more varied background than you've met in your entire life. Bonus laffo points for citing Said, you goddamned caricature of a freshman year, read-one-book subjct matter expert. In the name of Lu Xun, I beseech you: go to your mom.
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Oct 3, 2012 20:00
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Hedenius posted:Just a quick comment on this. I was in Nanjing this summer and me and my wife went to the China Modern History Museum or Presidential Palace as 99% of people will know it as. Jiang Jieshi is Chiang Kaishek, not Sun Yatsen (Sun Zhongshan). Both the Taiwanese and the Mainlanders do indeed agree that Dr. Sun is the best thing since sliced bread; the difference comes in when they talk about who is the rightful inheritor of legitimate political power post-Sun. The official CCP doctrine is (more or less, depending on political context) that CKS was a fascist dictator who deliberately undermined the war effort against the Japanese because he was more concerned with killing wonderful Communists, among many other real or imagined crimes. There is a tiny bit of nuance creeping into this narrative now that the CCP is attempting rapprochement with a more friendly Taiwanese governing party, but the best they can wrangle is a kind of mute neutrality on the subject matter. Nobody really talks old-timey politics now anyways (outside of intense anti-Japanese sentiment), so it's less of an issue for most people I would suspect. Still, pretty much every television drama I saw on CCTV that addressed the Sino-Japanese war period treated the Nationalists as at best misguided stooges and more often as malicious assholes, and since Jiang was Head Nationalist you can see where the spillover sentiment might come from.
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Oct 3, 2012 22:03
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Baby Huey Newton posted:Why would you post this? Do you want me to point out the obvious? That poverty tourism does not eliminate privilege and orientalism? So, just to clarify: working as an English teacher is modern day imperialism, because you don't ever interact with local people in a meaningful way... but God help you if you dare to study the language and try to travel around like the locals do, because that's "poverty tourism". Did I get that right?  Is there a way of interacting with my Chinese friends you would grant a Papal disposition for? One where I don't pay for sex, mind you, since I find that abhorrent. Baby Huey Newton posted:Quote for ban I'm sure they'll get right on that.
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Oct 4, 2012 01:22
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The funny thing to me about this derail is that my own little anecdote about my friend flipping out and weeping was about politics, not sexuality.
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Oct 5, 2012 17:50
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The problem with modern Taiwanese history is that nobody in Taiwan can agree on what happened or why, so anyone attempting to document that history ends up being inherently biased as holding one of the two binary (and opposed) viewpoints. It's a bit like trying to find a good account of the Israel/Palestine situation- even when you try to nuance it, both sides simply scream that you're biased against them. I took some classes in Taiwanese history when I was at TaiDa, mostly written from the Guomindang/Mainlander perspective, and it was fascinating stuff. Lots of rich culture, traditions, and viewpoints that simply don't exist in modern Dalu. Some of their old sayings are every bit as hilarious and/or cute as the old CCP slogans.
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Dec 10, 2012 18:29
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Man, guwen is boss, I don't know why you guys dislike it. It makes everything so poetic, shaded, and allegorical.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:21
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You anti-guwen people are insane, I sincerely wish English had some kind of constrained allegorical dialect where meaning was entirely contextual.
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Dec 19, 2012 18:32
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Deceitful Penguin posted:(Also, I've wanted to ask for a long time, what's your avatar from?) After this incident, a lot of Red Wings fans were really butthurt that it only resulted in a fine instead of a suspension for Shea Weber. To make fun of them, two Predators cheerleaders re-enacted the whole thing.
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Dec 19, 2012 19:13
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The Chinese have a very very limited littoral force projection capability, so there is indeed a nonzero chance that attack helicopters are part of a contingency plan to project force along their coast. Like, they could station the helicopters near Taiwan, allowing them to then redeploy other assets with farther range towards the Senkaku/Diaoyutai, etc. That's just speculation, mind you, but the fact that the Chinese are kind of woeful in terms of littoral forces is pretty well established.
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Jan 22, 2013 19:16
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Vladimir Putin posted:I don't think the problem is that the upper echelon is itching to go to war. By all rational views of statecraft, the people in charge of China and Japan both don't want to go to war. The problem is that the points of friction--these aircraft patrols and naval patrols in which they are given free reign to fire warning shots are played out by lower level soldiers. Just because it's a bunch of colonels spouting nationalist garbage, doesn't mean it's not dangerous anyways.
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Jan 24, 2013 00:30
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Also, if somebody told me to set up a 100% safe, high-quality milk based supply chain in China, I'd probably put a gun in my mouth. Especially powdered milk. Some things just aren't possible there these days due to corruption, pollution, mismanagement, etc. The whole big-headed baby scandal wasn't just a case of one or two factories cutting their formula with garbage, it was literally 50+ different brands made by hundreds of different factories across China. And even further up the supply chain, China has some of the laxest standards in the world for milk quality, so even if you can overcome the factory bullshit, you can't even source decent milk to start with. And the cows are probably grazing in a mercury-ridden hellscape downriver from a battery-slash-diaper fire.
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Jan 25, 2013 18:47
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Bloodnose posted:As much as any issue of convenience, the demand for baby formula is driven by horrifically misleading advertising that portrays milk powder as almost literally magical. If I wasn't on my phone, I'd dig up some commercials for you guys to watch. It was the same in Taiwan while I lived there, all these adds touting the mystical benefits of the formula's DHA and ARA supplements. Of course, both DHA and ARA exist in a much superior form in breast milk, but that never stopped anybody.
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Jan 28, 2013 16:40
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Deceitful Penguin posted:
While I don't really disagree with any of this (and in fact wrote an academic paper on China's lovely navy), I also wouldn't put it past some delusional, nationalist-propaganda-sniffing PLAN captain looking to make a big statement by starting a shooting war without orders. I mean, I know I already alluded to it in this thread, but it's not like you have to really dig deep in the history books to find examples of China and Japan going to war without the full authorization of their governments. Or many other countries, for that matter- it's kind of why you don't a) feed your officers a steady diet of nationalistic dogma, and b) stick hostile armies who are at 'peace' next to each other whenever possible, because Accidents Happen.
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Feb 5, 2013 21:09
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Warcabbit posted:Let's play a little game. Two ships sink. One chinese, one japanese. Someone's fault. They blame each other. What happens next? Who knows, but nothing good. The Chinese government has enough trouble keeping a lid on violent nationalist sentiment (which is in turn is just a proxy for general social unrest that would otherwise be directed at that government) without adding actual martyrs to the mix. And there would be plenty of right-wing nationalism in Japan to match it. So, maybe, or even probably, nothing would come of it. But I doubt anybody wants to give it a shot just for fun.
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Feb 5, 2013 21:45
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flatbus posted:Sorry to sink your fantasies, but this idea that some rogue hyperaggressive Chinese captain can plunge the entire nation into a catastrophic war implies an extreme lack of agency on behalf the Chinese foreign ministry and the PLA. The issue is more that an incident of some kind triggers a brief shooting war, China takes casualties, and then the kind of lunatic nationalist dipshit who spends his days pining to burn more Toyotas loses his loving mind and hits the streets yowling for blood. Then the government is in a pickle about how to deal with mass social unrest that isn't directed against them per se, but which goes against their rational interests. It is hard enough to back down from military casualties in the best of circumstances, and China hardly enjoys those. I doubt it would turn into some Alex Jones global war porn, but it will definitely suck to deal with and be a much trickier situation than you're making it out to be. The CCP is pumping people full of nationalistic garbage for a reason, after all.
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Feb 6, 2013 00:23
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Warcabbit posted:This is pretty much my rough analysis of things. The way I see it, there are a significant amount of chinese officers who have never seen war, even Vietnam/Korea. They've been fed propaganda for long enough that they may not be entirely rational actors. Assuming one of them spits the dummy, and a good amount of the rest of his cohort join in, how long would it last, what kind of damage would be seen? I dunno, I suspect that immediately after the first yahoo starts an unauthorized shooting incident, all PLA officers will receive a memo to the effect of "Just FYI, Captain Tai Lihai has been shot, and the next one of you dickheads who tries a stunt like that will follow suit."
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Feb 6, 2013 03:03
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一白遮三丑
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Feb 19, 2013 18:50
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I had one of my teachers at Qingdao tell me that Jews are "mystical", plus the usual "way to control the world banking system there guy!  " type stuff.
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Feb 20, 2013 02:31
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GlassEye-Boy posted:Hard drugs are a nono also. Marijuana is generally unheard of except in Yunnan. The Confucius family ancestral temple on top of Mount Taishan is covered, like literally blanketed as far as the eye can see, in ditch weed. None of the locals know what it is, so when I mentioned it to my teacher she looked at me like what you'd expect if you told the average American that the Washington Monument is made out of dried yak penises.
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Feb 26, 2013 19:10
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ReindeerF posted:A thing that cannot be overstated. Every time I see that guy and his wife getting on a Cathay flight or whatever in first class with their designer mom jeans and red socks and horrible loud polo shirts it's just :ugh: because I know they're spending gobs of money on this poo poo. Living under communist rule somehow had this weird side-effect of setting back fashion like 2-3 decades. Russians are identical and always easy to spot in an airport. What the gently caress about escaping a dystopian technocracy for a capitalist plutocracy makes you want to wear acid washed jeans and Chuck Taylors and always be dragging around a plastic bag of duty free Marlboros? I'll never figure that out. This is basically the way I can distinguish a mainlander from a local (likely HK descended) Chinese person in Vancouver at a glance, so as to know beforehand if I should attempt Mandarin first, because Good Goddamn its like a loving uniform those dudes.
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Mar 9, 2013 21:04
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Longanimitas posted:The USSR conscientiously and intelligently stopped assisting China with nuclear technology after Mao openly said something to the effect of "who cares how many Chinese die, we can always make more." Reneged is not the correct word to use here. Mao's lunatic-level blitheness on the subject of nuclear weapons managed to scare the poo poo out of Khrushchev, who basically thought he was nuts. Every time Mao would telegram him demanding Soviet support for this-or-that he would include some random aside on how it would be No Big Deal if half the world was wiped out or whatever.
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Mar 14, 2013 05:34
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Baronjutter posted:They seem to judge the success of a society by how many lovely skyscrapers they build per month. Too much Atlas Shrugged is bad for a child's brain development.
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Apr 9, 2013 17:53
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Wonton posted:On the bright site, people in Chengdu don't give a poo poo about the earthquake, they just moved their mahjong tables downstairs and continue enjoying the rest of the weekend. All is well. Haha, this is indeed Chengdu.txt
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Apr 20, 2013 21:00
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:The GF wants to take me back to Shanghai with her, so maybe we'll get there just in time. Its just as bad on the mainland. See: ghost cities.
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Jun 12, 2013 15:32
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So a funny thing happened today...
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Jun 20, 2013 21:55
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karthun posted:Is that the Chinese equivalent of Libor or Fed Funds rate? Equivalent to LIBOR, specifically. Lawman 0 posted:
No, this is an entirely home-grown catastrophe. The PBoC either has to keep inflating the shadow credit bubble they've managed to blown up to a truly impressive size, or basically allow the banks to poo poo their pants rather publicly and risk a full blown run on the banks/interbank lending freeze. So far the PBoC decided to go with Option 2, but it remains to be seen if they have the sack to keep it up when things get really shirty next week.
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Jun 21, 2013 00:14
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Y-Hat posted:What happens next week? Assuming the PBoC doesn't cave and print more money... have you seen "It's A Wonderful Life"?
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Jun 21, 2013 04:14
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He can't go to New Zealand because NZ is one of the five countries that participate in PRISM. Pretty sure they'd extradite his rear end.
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Jun 26, 2013 16:44
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Dr. Tough posted:If it's anything like leftism on American college campuses then it's absolutely nothing to worry/care about. You're right, its not as if China has a history of violent leftist student movements or anything.
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Aug 9, 2013 22:28
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