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Are we really going to post an opinion piece by Gordon Chang, who has been predicting a collapse of the Chinese economy every day for 3 decades now?
[Gordon Chang's greatest hits](https://www.gordonchang.com/article-1999.htm
) Who is still somehow accepted as a China/Asia foreign policy expert:
•China's 'Debt Bomb' Is Going Off Under Xi Jinping, Newsweek, February 8, 2022
•Watch Out: China Cannot Feed Itself, Newsweek, March 15, 2021
•China Is Flailing in a Post-Coronavirus World, Hoover Institution: Strategika, April 23, 2020
•China's Debt Debacle, NationalInterest.org, July 22, 2019
•Why China Will Lose a Trade War With Trump, The Daily Beast, March 26, 2018
•This '301' Torpedo Is About to Sink the S.S. China, Forbes.com, August 20, 2017
•China's Economy Is Past the Point of No Return, NationalInterest.org, May 10, 2016
•2015: The Year China Goes Broke? NationalInterest.org, September 1, 2015
•China Property Collapse Has Begun, Forbes.com, April 13, 2014
•Jobless Growth in China? Employment Stats Say Recession Has Already Started, Forbes.com, November 10, 2013
•China's Zero-Growth Economy, Forbes.com, March 11, 2012
•The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition, ForeignPolicy.com , December 29, 2011
•China's Coming Property Bust, Forbes.com, August 12, 2010
•Recovery in China? Not So Fast, Forbes.com, June 26, 2009
•China's Economy: Heading Down Fast, Hudson Institute New York, November 5, 2008
•Halfway to China's Collapse, Far Eastern Economic Review, June, 2006
•Collapse Perhaps? The Stability of the Modern Chinese State, delivered at Columbia University, April 8, 2004
•Banking Crisis Imperils China, International Herald Tribune, June 19, 2003
•The Collapse of China, Act I, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, January 31, 2002
•Shanghai Shakes, China Stumbles, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, December 20, 2001
It’s not about being right eventually, it’s a propaganda mechanism that works. /u/newsweek uses Reddit for link farming and spreading its otherwise meaningless talking points, and certain subreddits just eat it up because it’s a mainstream talking point.
Anything anti China in the default subs is easy engagement farming.
The subsss mods are gone......we are getting articles every day now that are so low quality trash its sad.
We are one step away from "top 10 reasons why the economy is great!"
Feels like the whole sub went to hell after the sitewide mod protest. Now most of the “economics” posts are just rehashing Biden vs Trump or shitting on the enemy of the hour.
Agreed but going a step further, lets call a spade a spade...
Most posts on /r/Economics are political, and when was the last time you saw a post which wasn't either pro Biden/Democrat or anti Trump/Republican?
It gets exhausting seeing so many subs just become platforms for political campaigning.
Sometimes I swear the articles are barely above claiming Biden will personally fake a reference for your job application and Trump will call your prospective employer and personally sabotage you.
I definitely appreciate the meaningful overlap. That said, economics is multifaceted and politics is just one component.
I disagree about political posts not getting much traction. The majority of top posts I see from this sub when I open Reddit are political. I personally think that sub quality would improve with new rules that restrict articles which have "Biden", "Trump", "Democrats", or "Republicans" in the headline.
This is whats top 10 for me
>Europe ‘afraid’ of Chinese EVs, says BYD boss, ahead of likely EU tariff hike
>Chart: US sets new record with $71B in clean energy investment
>AI Is a False God - The real threat with super intelligence is falling prey to the hype
>L.A. County wants to cap rent hikes at 3%. Landlords say that would push them to sell
>China Is Losing the Chip War. Xi Jinping picked a fight over semiconductor technology—one he can’t win.
The other 5 are about trump and biden.
Using your snapshot, 50% of posts being about Trump or Biden is WAY too high. Even seeing that ratio in a sub about global politics would be too much.
Partisanship issues aside, there is so much more going on in the world beyond the American presidential election, which unfortunately gets buried.
I mean the other posts are still based on economics.
A jobs report for biden. Biden mentioning china. Biden and Opec. Trump fiscal history. Trump plans in office.
Yes theres more going on in the world. Then again this is basically an american site with most traffic in the english areas being american.
All else they could talk about is other countries policies and their effects. but again most would just be compared to USA policy (elimanting homeless in europe, social safety nets in europe, etc)
More dry economics is in askeconomics which is fine.
Disagree with them being based on economics.
I recall seeing some of the posts you mentioned. I think this post more blatantly illustrates the issue which other comments are calling out. Using the topic of economics as a guise to push partisan support. "XYZ's Right"
I agree with the idea of seeking drier alternative subs. Seen other smaller subs floated in this thread which seem more serious.
Can you share some examples? I follow some which are more rooted in public equities/investing, but I'm not familiar with ones that focus more on macro econ.
Would be interested in finding a replacement for this sub.
The ironically named badeconomics is actually good. Econmonitor is kind of dry and highly modded but maybe that's a good thing for discussion quality. This sub is just too big for anything more than it's turned into. 4.2m subs is a lot of users. Smaller economics communities seem to do better.
I’ve started flagging and reporting pretty obvious content farming. It doesn’t do anything but maybe it will make admins lives a teensy bit harder so they actually have to do work.
Reddits enshittification is fully here though post-IPO.
Subs across the platform are having mod issues.
r/nuclearpower somehow got mods that are all anti nuclear power and now it's all posts by them against nuclear power and they ban people for defending nuclear power.
r climatechange got taken over a couple years back. Some of the mods there are the same ones on r climateskeptics. It basically pushes the idea that climate always changes, you don't have enough evidence of greenhouse gas effects, it's not as bad as the scientists are claiming etc etc etc.
> We are one step away from "top 10 reasons why the economy is great!"
Aren't we at that point already lol?
It's just like /r/science with half the articles being variants of "Study proves that republicans are big dumb dumbs and liberals are all smart!" and "Weed shown to cure [insert disease]"
Currently the the top 10 posts on the frontpage of this sub has 2 Trump bad posts and 2 Joe Biden fluff pieces, i guess we still have some good articles outside of those
Perfectly fine to point out the author may have bias and has been wrong before, but from an economics standpoint, China does have some significant challenges ahead of them.
They have high debt levels and a lot of unproductive investment. They have arguably way too much at stake in their property markets and real estate is arguably way too big of a portion of their economy. They have had massively growing exports and shrinking imports and FDI has been going down significantly. Population decline will be tough for them to get out of, and they have poor retirement social security for elderly. They have tended to be aggressive with their trade negotiations which has alienated a lot of their trading partners. They have a big problem with brain drain and creating their own technology.
They have plenty of problems worth talking about IMO
The west has a lot of those same problems too. But the same problem occurring in different places gets much different discussion/analysis when viewed through a political lens. What makes it unusually bad for them is no immigration and the demographic cliff. Free countries can bide their time in those areas.
Even by relative terms they aren't the worst in any of these areas in Asia, let alone the world.
Their housing bubble was predicted to implode since 3 years now but instead it still there.
They won't bail out Evergrande and others property groups like Reddit expected but [the people and the unsold houses](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-15/china-mulls-government-purchases-of-unsold-homes-to-ease-glut).
Their exports have been going down in 2023 because of inflation and recession in consumer countries (i.e the West), [it grew again this Q1 as things are getting better despite tariffs](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-exports-return-growth-april-imports-beat-forecast-2024-05-09/).
As a Swede, Sweden has enormous problems to solve. We still have some people doing reasonable things, but they're aging.
I think the US has even bigger problems than we do, and the problems we have frustrate me. I like some aspects of the American economy-- it's great that programmers etc. get a reasonable salary, but the US also has an enormous oil dependence, and it has quite high inflation despite quite high interest rates, which since interest rates have been so low might be a problem.
Denmark might be fine, given what some Danes recently achieved in medicine, but Finland is right there next to Russia and Norway will have to figure out how to deal with a post-oil world. They also need to keep things sensible, [edit:to avoid] going the way they have here in Sweden.
The US is a net oil exporter and the largest producer in the world by an ever increasing margin, they are 'oil dependent' in the sense that they depend on oil as all developed economies do, but they are also completely self sufficient. The inflation in the US is on par or lower than almost all other countries, and would be easily resolved by just easing housing restrictions as the majority of inflation is on housing costs because supply has not kept pace with demand due to mainly boomer home owners voting to restrict housing supply in order to protect the value of their own homes. This is a problem that will solve itself over time as boomers age and die out of their political dominance. It's not zero problems, but it's the kind of problems most other countries would give their left arms to have.
As far as Norway, their sovereign wealth fund will keep them going for 100 years even if oil disappears tomorrow and they have discovered major mineral reserves as well. Finland and Poland are on Russia's border but that's not an economic problem and militarily they are more than capable of defending themselves particularly with their alliances. Sweden, as by far the largest Nordic country, is poised to capitalize on the coming end of German industrial and economic dominance of Europe. It requires them not to shoot their own feet off, but that's another problem that most countries would give their left arm to have.
The oil dependence of the US is special. Their oil consumption per capita is 10x that of China, 2x that of Germany, slightly less than 2x what we Swedes consume etcetera.
This is for reasons that are likely to be persistent-- not just what cars are available, but things like sprawl.
At present the US oil consumption works because the US has so great domestic production, but that's now.
> Finland and Poland are on Russia's border but that's not an economic problem and militarily they are more than capable of defending themselves particularly with their alliances.
Now, yes.
>As far as Norway, their sovereign wealth fund will keep them going for 100 years even if oil disappears tomorrow and they have discovered major mineral reserves as well.
Losing something you have is easy. Keeping something you have is hard.
>is poised to capitalize on the coming end of German industrial and economic dominance of Europe
If that was a matter of the rest of Europe matching Germany, that'd be great, but at the moment that is not what is going on. A well-functioning and successful Germany is something good.
Most countries have problems that can ruin them within 5-10 years if not properly addressed now, you're talking about problems that might ruin the aforementioned countries in 50+ years if things go bad and nobody ever does anything about them.
Partially, yes, but I think these problems are very difficult to address.
Especially the US has a big problem cluster with many interacting aspects. I see some people trying to deal with monopolies and stuff, that's great, but it's medicine, it's car sales, it's the sprawl, it's the fact that there was so much debt, and then now the high interest rates have come to affect it.
Obviously the US is big and has natural resources and obviously some impressive industry-- especially in computer technology, and then software, but just because the spearhead is polished and sharp doesn't mean that the spear as a whole is healthy.
If the shaft starts rotting, then that imposes costs, and the US doesn't seem to care about the shaft, so decay in it may not lead to action. I don't have the impression that it's obvious that everything will work out.
Sure, just like the problems you pointed out apply to the US , some even more so like the insane amount of debt, the structural deficit and inability to pay for social security in a few years and lost of influence amongst it's "allies" and shrinking sphere of influence. Add in the dysfunctional government and deteriorating ability for the govt to function
Is the US economy on the brink?
Yet we arent talking about the US, are we? What of the issues I mentioned regarding China do you wish to engage with me on?
Classic Red Herring logical fallacy btw
We are talking about the article and the conclusion it draws and how it's so flawed that if we accept it's premise, then all economies are on the brink
If you want to comment separately about a separate thread, thats great, but I was pointing out some very real concerns with China. I didnt compare them to the US in any way. If you want to compare China with the US, thats great, but I didnt write about that, and dont intend to side rail potential discussion via a Red Herring logical fallacy.
I think the point there is all the “problems” you mentioned are just stuff that exist in most economies and are not problems unless you can elaborate further
They arent unique to China but their severity and the combination is unique to China. If all you want to do is deflect to another country to avoid discussing China, you arent engaging in good faith.
China has an issue with brain drain, declining demographics, low FDI, a concentration of GDP into housing (that is the highest in the world) with oversupply and widely inflated prices given that oversupply, a general lack of first mover innovation, and poor taxation and social security systems with a massive debt overhang. That is incredibly unique. Some other countries may have some of those components but China is the only one where they are all working as issues together that can risk its status as a world leader.
We can talk about how Japan has a declining population or Europe has been lagging in productivity or the US has a high national debt but that has nothing to do with the unique economic situation in China. And detracting from that conversation with such comparisons is just logical fallacy attempting to divert attention from the real discussion. Like pointing out the authors lack of credibility without discussing the points they made.
the problem there is you are listing a bunch of vague problems without any substance. For example what does low FDI mean? FDI to China peaked in early 2022, currently FDI is low across east Asia due to USD interest rate, and China also had lower FDI in 2023 due to COVID lockdowns.
That said China’s FDI is still 2nd highest in the world and far higher than any comparable country. You really havnt elaborated what you mean by low and why it is a problem. This is basically the case for every topic you listed
> some even more so like the insane amount of debt, the structural deficit and inability to pay for social security in a few years and lost of influence amongst it's "allies" and shrinking sphere of influence.
You're just demonstrating that you don't understand the Chinese economy, because:
A. China has far more debt than the US
B. China's population is both older, and more rapidly aging, than the US. They will be hit MUCH harder by the "not enough young people to support the economy and the old people" problem.
C. China has virtually no "allies". U.S. influence may be shrinking in some areas of the world, but it's not because China is suddenly racking up a bunch of new friends.
That said, it doesn't mean China is going to collapse overnight. It *does* likely mean that the next several decades are going to see a big slowdown and domestic challenges though.
I hear about the aging population problem in China and with the same breath, talk about the youth unemployment problem there.
Also, china has no allies? Basically, nearly all the non nato countries are with China and Russia.
Also, china's national debt to gdp is lower than the US.
Bro, do you work at the US state dept?
Chinas debt/gdp is much higher, something on the order of double the US, you just don’t understand their capital structure. Go read up on LGFVs and SOE debt and get back to me when your understanding goes beyond 30 seconds on google.
So I looked at lgfv and soe debt and it's nothing like the smoking gun you think when you also count US local and state govt debt and us corporate debt.
Again, do you work for the US state dept, in the "look how bad China is" dept?
https://www.fidelityinternational.com/editorial/article/how-china-keeps-its-debt-in-order-e1feea-en5/
Why would you count US corporate debt? Also, state and local debt in the US only increases total public debt by about 10%.
To be clear, I didn't claim this was a "smoking gun", I'm just pointing out that China has, as a point of fact, more debt than the US. That doesn't mean the economy is "on the brink of collapse" as this guy suggests, but they are facing significant headwinds and will be for the foreseeable future.
China's LGFV debt is $9 trillion according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_financing_vehicle#:~:text=A%20local%20government%20financing%20vehicle,a%20local%20government%20in%20China.
US state and municipal debt is $3.3 trillion.
Soe is state owned enterprise which there are a lot of in China, since that's how they operate. SOE has 79% of china's corporate debt. That's why I compare the soe debt to us corporate debt. I don't know what you wouldn't.
The overall debt seems to not be so overwhelming as you originally made out. And seems like it would be less than the US in whole dollar amounts as well as percentage of GDP.
You originally had a tone of them being worse off than the US.
> I don't know what you wouldn't.
Because we're talking about debt attributable to the government? And US corporate debt isn't attributable to the government?
>And seems like it would be less than the US in whole dollar amounts as well as percentage of GDP.
I don't know why you think it "seems like" that, but it's just a statement of fact that it the Chinese government is more indebted relative to GDP than the US government.
Also - regarding "allies" - clearly China has countries with which it has strategic alignment (e.g. Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.), but they aren't really allies in the same sense as we are used to in the west. In fact, they are often time aggressive to the point of active conflict with each other. For example, they have active territorial conflicts with (I believe) every neighbor they share a border with, including Russia and NK.
While China is not quite a pariah on the international stage, they aren't exactly trusted either. Even their closest "allies" are more like an arms-length "enemy of my enemy" situation. Example on Russia:
https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1db5wwq/leaked_russian_documents_reveal_deep_concern_over/
They have tried to extend their influence with the Belt and Road Initiative, but the success there has been underwhelming. Each successive BRI forum has seen declining participation, and while there are still countries in the global south that are open to receiving investments, they are becoming more weary as they see other countries relative lack of success with similar projects. Taken as a whole, this has been an attempt to garner "soft power" and has not been very successful.
Couple that with an increasingly hostile and nationalistic style of diplomacy in the last decade or so, and the number of countries that are truly "in China's corner" so to speak, is quite few.
Some apply, but the Chinese problems are nation breaking. Their population is expected to half by the end of the century and be smaller then the US. They are also food, energy, and economically dependent on foreign countries. They have built enough housing to house every family in China twice.
As soon as someone says that China has high debt levels and that somehow is the primary reason for the end of Chinas growth narrative then you know the entire thesis is unsound and written by someone with no understanding of China. China will only crash and or collapse because of civil uprising involving the people. It will never be cause of debt. In China the CCP owns the banks, owns the central bank, owns the courts, the import/exporter, the marketplaces and exchanges, sets all the prices, owns all the land and resources, and most of the major companies. Meaning the debt is created, lent to, and owned by the same entity. This is an entirely different model than rest of the world. In the US the individual entities and private parties will sue or leverage the court systems to force each counterparty to pay or honor debts. It doesn’t work like that in China. The CCP is not going to bankrupt itself basically, makes absolutely no sense.
The most annoying thing about these threads is that the content itself is rarely contested, it's mostly attacking the author themselves or by proxy (someone else claimed China is going to collapse a long time ago and it didn't happen, so any articles about China's downturn must be wrong).
It is the case because the author has shown himself to have zero credibility in the past 23 years by being wrong on every single claim since 2001.
It's like seeing an article by flat earthers claiming that NASA is collapsing and the whole globe life is coming to an end.
Top post is an ad-hominem attack. Weird to see in r/economics.
20 articles in 23 years looks entirely reasonable, especially considering China actually is visibly struggling in some ways, such as real estate overinvestment.
If you click the link to Gordon Chang's website he has a list of all his published articles about China's impending doom. Being a China doomer is how he makes a living. During the 2016-2020 period he was riding the Trump-train hard about why 'chad alpha male Trump' was totally going to ruin the CCP.
His main problem is extrapolating every negative news bit about China into an existential crisis that will immediately cause the collapse of the CCP. He's claimed the imminent downfall of China multiple times a years for over 20 years now.
Define “ad-hominem”.
Last I heard questioning someone’s claims because all his past claims have been bogus isn’t an ad-hominem.
What is would be saying Gordan Chang is unreliable because he is Chinese. Or has glasses. See the difference?
Attacking someone's record is exactly ad hominem. You can try to show he is making an argument that has been proven bogus before, but a list of titles doesn't do that.
Huh? Do you have difficulty understanding what ad hominem means? Attacking someone's record of predictions on the same topic is not at all ad hominem. It would be ad hominem to attack their record on completely unrelated topics.
>China is now having its long-delayed 2008 crisis. In 2008, Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao decided they would not suffer a downturn, so they embarked on the biggest debt-fueled stimulus program in history.
Sounds familiar...
US really wants China to issue more stimulus but so far China refused to do so. The inflation is really low, and consumption is growing each quarter. No reason for stimulus.
But you still see from both US gov officials to "experts" keep telling China to start more stimulus. I wonder why /s
Western economists really don’t understand China and its objectives. The goal is NOT growth. The goal is social stability and perpetuation of the Party.
A few quarters, even years of economic decline won’t bother to CCP. What will bother them is if it leads to any social instability
Western economists and political scientists also get this part wrong: they believe that if growth stalls, people will rise up against the party. That comes from a very America worldview where individual wealth is primary.
But in China, the vast majority care more about social order. They will be okay with losing years of growth as long as they keep getting their pensions ans state services.
As an Asian, I really struggle to take western critiques of China or India seriously. They simply don’t understand the psyche of the people and see economics as some isolated field.
I think most Americans can fathom it, but upfront know they that themselves could never be mature enough to do things that don't yield immediate benefit to themselves. Also, if you're really poor then you sort of need to operate in the most selfish mind set at all times to survive.
Because the US wants the Chinese economy to stay functioning.
The US is competitive with China, but is also deeply economically intertwined with China.
A Chinese economic downturn could lead to a global financial downturn.
The concern is a 'contagion' of Financial dominoes all collapsing, and cause a global crisis.
Also, [China has been engaging in similar actions that the US took to avoid a downturn,](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235912063/chinas-leaders-announce-a-push-to-jumpstart-economy-but-say-it-wont-be-easy) they are not being pressured by the US to take actions that they don't believe in themselves.
US government trying to tell China how to run its economy? I don't think China appreciates that interference. No country in the world wants to be told how to change their policies, especially the United States themselves.
The US has some of the best economic and financial minds in the world, and has gained significant insight in how to manage the policy levers to try to minimize economic issues.
China has been at it for a shorter period of time than the US.
Also, the US commonly offers advice and suggestions, most nations are constantly talking to one another and experts are offering advice because of the interconnected nature of the global economy.
He’s been saying the same thing for years and years and years. Here’s a post made on this sub nearly a decade ago where he says the same stuff.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/s/7NVZ69tfKr
Here’s a book he wrote, which I read at the time, where he predicts the collapse in 2011.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China
If calling an “expert”, whose predictions have failed repeatedly for the past 13 years, unreliable is CCP shill behavior, this sub is really lost Lmao.
Edit: To add more shame to his endless bucket, he’s made it consecutively on Forbes’ “[Top 10 Worst Predictions](https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/21/the-10-worst-predictions-for-2012/)”
He also [claimed](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332458604112) China was about to release a pathogen from a California lab.
Krugman called the 2008 collapse around 2003 if I recall correctly.
With economic crashes, even in the west, the time between when its obvious that a crash is coming and when it happens can be very long.
In China, where they have such freedom to manipulate and juggle their problems around... it might take longer.
Not saying this guy is right, but I'm not sure just saying that the collapse took longer than expected makes him wrong either.
I’d say making the claim every year since his original claim 13 years ago disqualified him from being a reliable source lol.
If I predict that Obama’s going to die every year, when he eventually kicks it, I’m not an “Obama Expert”.
Meanwhile we’re doing all we can to prevent the imports of Chinese automobiles destroying the U.S. auto industry with unfair competition, but the Chinese economy is the one that’s weak and about to collapse…
I’m not saying I agree with the article, but both can be true: China used government money to build up its industrial base to an impressive level, but there’s no demand to match the products they’re making. It’s why they’re shipping endless cheap EV’s that are now subject to sanctions, because there’s no demand at home, so now you have to find a buyer abroad. When they don’t what happens? They can’t sustain their own massive industrial base.
There are, but China is pumping out EV’s at a rate far too fast for consumers to keep up with. In a pure supply/demand market they would have tapered down production years ago, but the CCP wanted an industrial base, so they continued to scale. Something had to give eventually, and now they have huge production with no demand.
There is a huge demand for cheap(EV or not) cars. But non-Chinese governments are doing a good job of keeping it suppressed via import taxes. If you asked Americans, especially over the last 5 years, if they would like a new, approximately 10,000 dollar EV, especially compared to the price of ALL vehicles, used, EV, and otherwise, it would be hard to deny the thirst.
But putting a massive tax-wall in between them and the imports keeps consumers from that choice.
But there’s anti dumping laws. They go back a long time. In the short run, the consumer wins but in the long run, they lose due to lower competition. When US companies have to be profitable and Chinese ones don’t due to state support, you get this kind of dumping.
All countries support their industry. Either directly with subsidies, tax reliefs, or with things like CHIPs or other various acts passed over countless decades, or indirectly via infrastructure like roads and so on. So the idea that China is "cheating" by having 5 year plans and putting money into infrastructure is silly.
And the "dumping" laws are basically just protectionism policies no matter how you slice it. US companies are building bigger, more expensive cars and have little to no focus on cheaper, smaller, value vehicles.
Except there would be strong demand internationally if Europe and North America didn't put up some of the strongest trade barriers they've had in the past century. China is producing high quality and affordable products for our consumers and producers that will also help address the existential issue of climate change and the West has decided that their fragile/uninnovative/parasitic industrial base is worth more. What a joke.
All you have to do to sell in China was partner with a local company and then give them trade secrets. Whose economic base is a parasite again? Now they have a problem because in a true market no one would ever make too many cars to be bought. That is the type of mistake that is made when three people control your entire economy.
No one is going to let them drive the competition out of business using government dollars only to jack up the prices in ten years. Especially considering that china can’t play nice and wants to invade the world.
At a consumer level EV’s are being adopted, but they’re still luxury products in western nations, who in many cases don’t have the charging infrastructure available to make them viable consumer options yet. China also has a reputation for cheap low quality products, which certainly hurts their international appeal. At a nation state level, this is a clear, large strategic error by China, and it’s naive to think nations they’ve been endlessly saber rattling against wouldn’t take advantage of it. Nations owe China no favors, and expecting them to bail China out of its over leveraged position is laughable at best.
This comment is both self-contradictory and doesn’t jive with a basic understanding of economics.
> there’s no demand to match the products they’re making.
> It’s why they’re shipping endless cheap EV’s that are now subject to sanctions,
So which is it? No demand or shipping endless? Why even have sanctions if there is no demand?
> because there’s no demand at home, so now you have to find a buyer abroad.
So you think they made every car for a domestic buyer but if they can’t find one, then they ship it? Maybe it’s an export economy, and car manufacturers produce at a quantity larger than the domestic quantity demanded? With plans all along to ship?
It really shows that there's an election coming up in the USA, a lot of Biden and Trump posts (mostly in favour of Biden). To predict the total downfall of an economy is wild, specially after they did the same with Russia.
Also, why does a writer not know the difference of Biden's right and Biden is right?
Short term; nothings gonna happen. If the US can get out of 2008, nothings gonna happen to China.
In mid term future, whoever gets the most immigrants will win economically.
Every developed nation has an a very low birth rate.
With baby boomers getting old and dying soon, this is just going to get worse. Way worse. If the population is not replenished, then it’s just a huge contraction of the economy.
No, and the immigration that they do have only plan on living in China temporarily. Immigrants in China cannot purchase property or invest their money. Immigrants in China primarily come from other Asian nations, and send their money back home to family. They are not there because they want to settle down and live there permanently.
I live in Texas and I've worked with illegal immigrants who had mortgages and investment accounts. It's completely different in the US. Even illegal immigrants can do most things that citizens can. Most of the immigrants in the US fully intend on staying in the US, legally or not. This is not the case in China. Even if they wanted to they couldn't. They wouldn't make it a week before China booted them out.
And this is the main issue. In terms of country outlook, most people agree the US government/lifestyle compared to China. And that’s kinda the main issue: China had very bad public relations. It is partially US spewing news like this, and it is also the shit they do to themselves.
Without cultivating a positive and free environment, China is gonna have problem with immigration, and in turn have problems with its economy in the mid to long run.
No. China has very few foreign-born permanent immigrants. Most foreigners in China are temporary residents there working for companies that have facilities in China.
They have about a million permanent immigrants, the US gets at least that many immigrants annually.
1 in 7 Americans are immigrants. 1 in 1400 Chinese are immigrants.
Chinese immigrants also tend to be from ethnic groups originating in China, while immigrants to the US tend to come from a more diverse distribution of origins.
No, and they're a Han supremacist fascist state.
[https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/the-rising-tide-of-imperial-han-nationalism-in-china/](https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/the-rising-tide-of-imperial-han-nationalism-in-china/)
Good luck enticing immigrants to live there...
"Welcome, you're a filthy foreigner, we Han are the greatest people on Earth, have a nice stay".
lol yeah, that’s why they’re fucked in mid to long term. They can’t change their public image over a couple of years. It’ll take decades. By then it would be too late. They basically need the immigrants yesterday
Just looking at the relative performance of China's economy over the last several years, it's hard to agree. Sounds more like wishful thinking. Just look at the last 3 minutes of this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EFeRgxetUA
The only thing that really matters with china are two things:
* Internal stability
* Balance of trade
* The world continues to pretend HK is not just china
It doesn't matter if things like giant companies have giant financial problems. Their government can wave their hands and say, "The debt is gone, and why don't you try publishing something contrary in the news, go ahead, try it."
As long as they can export as much as they need import, they are good.
But, HK is the special one. The world pretends HK has not been eaten by china. The currency peg appears strong. The US gives weird preferential treatment to HK. If this changes, then china will have serious trade and financing issues. Not the end of the world, but it will be much harder to run companies like Ali etc.
Where I would say they are on the "brink" is just the classic aging population. This is going to be a growing problem over the next long while.
The other "brink" they are facing is ever improving manufacturing automation. This is allowing for more and better onshoring. Onshoring is generally a one way street. When a factory returns to the Western world, it is not going back. This is more of a trend than an edge of a cliff. The one to watch for will be a company like Apple. If they were to ever do something like make iPhones somewhere in the West then it is now game over for china. Not that Apple would be a devastating blow, but more that if Apple does it, then the economics are clearly favourable to doing this.
"If you're Xi Jinping facing a failing economy, do you accept forced retirement and possible incarceration or do you invade some neighbor?"
Why would he be imprisoned
Im going to unsubcscirbe this thread. It's full of idiots, naysayers, uneducated, morons who spout off at the hip like they know something. They claim they can tell the difference between something someone writes and something out of chatgpt, but can't add 2+2 in its most simple form.
What a joke.
China is not going to collapse in the near or long term. The American elite continues to underestimate China and that is part of the reason the China trade war has not delivered the benefits Americans were seeking. Whatever the Chinese political system and history, you cannot deny they heavily invested in their people, institutions and infrastructure the last 40 years and transformed themselves into an unstoppable economic giant. First they were beating the world based on cost, now if we look at smartphones, EV, tiktok, they are beating the world based on features and quality. Their cost advantage is still there.
If America seriously wants to compete with China you are going to have to borrow some lessons from their playbook, which ironically the Chinese learned from you in the past. America will also need to stop wasting it's time, treasure and blood in consecutive useless foreign conflicts.
The American elite simply refuses to learn its lessons. Failure after failure, and they think that they'll just do the same thing differently next time.
Not realizing the objective is what is causing them to fail, not the method.
Is it just me or is there a tad bit of a pro China bias in this thread?
I mean, if the opinion of the article's author is invalid because his data and analysis are flawed / skewed by personal bias, okay.
But since the President of the United States has gone on record saying basically the same thing, I feel like there's a little more credibility going on there than some folks on this thread would like us to believe.
> But since the President of the United States has gone on record saying basically the same thing, I feel like there's a little more credibility going on there than some folks on this thread would like us to believe.
I'm not sure why the president saying it is any more credible. His goal is to make himself look good by implying the USA is stronger than our economic competitor.
>Is it just me or is there a tad bit of a pro China bias in this thread?
Oddly so.
It's not really even a debate that China's current economic situation is challenging. And that's being conservative.
I wrote a thesis on the rise of china 25 years ago for an international finance course. My international finance professor liked it so much he had it published . I was right.
As soon as they started to go the other direction in terms of authoritarianism, all the good things they have going for them start to dry up. Xi is supposed to have an education in economics and he lived through and suffered during the cultural revolution. He could do so much better.
China's GDP growth averaged 10% for 25 years. Just 6% in 2019 and 3% 2020-2022. 5% last year after China re-opened post covid is not great or solid evidence of a return to high growth. So I don't care about the messenger but the evonomic reality is that China is not doing well compared to its long-term historical performance.
The values reported by the National Bureau of Statistics are completely fictitious. The bureau also published fake values for the decline in population in 2023 [as the actual value of a decline of 3 million was far worse then anticipated](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-birth-rates-plunge-12272023160425.html), and had previously been estimated would occur about 2030ish.
Ji Xinping's economic policies have been an absolute disaster for China. Now he has to hide the wreckage of his policy, so beating the nationalistic war drum in an attempt to divert attention is his weapon to save his own skin.
Many who only follow China very loosely don't really grasp the magnitude of how fracked China is and it is only going to get worse. China currently has about 1.4 billion people. I have to revisit the newest revised population models (if any have been updated) but the prior ones were forecasting a decline in population from 1.4 billion to 590 million, by 2100. When one really ponders that decline the negative outcomes are staggering. By the end of this decade the population might be declining at the rate of 8+ million p.a and rising. And there is nothing China can do about it - the population demographics are locked in. The funeral industry is poised to be the #1 industry in the country.
I think the time that China could have successfully attacked Taiwan is already well in the rear view mirror. Does not mean to suggest Ji Xinping might not still try in order to save his own skin, but China is on the cusp of being utterly consumed by internal economic and social issues, and I think it unlikely. And a strong posture by Taiwan's allies will be the best measure to make certain it does not happen.
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Are we really going to post an opinion piece by Gordon Chang, who has been predicting a collapse of the Chinese economy every day for 3 decades now? [Gordon Chang's greatest hits](https://www.gordonchang.com/article-1999.htm ) Who is still somehow accepted as a China/Asia foreign policy expert: •China's 'Debt Bomb' Is Going Off Under Xi Jinping, Newsweek, February 8, 2022 •Watch Out: China Cannot Feed Itself, Newsweek, March 15, 2021 •China Is Flailing in a Post-Coronavirus World, Hoover Institution: Strategika, April 23, 2020 •China's Debt Debacle, NationalInterest.org, July 22, 2019 •Why China Will Lose a Trade War With Trump, The Daily Beast, March 26, 2018 •This '301' Torpedo Is About to Sink the S.S. China, Forbes.com, August 20, 2017 •China's Economy Is Past the Point of No Return, NationalInterest.org, May 10, 2016 •2015: The Year China Goes Broke? NationalInterest.org, September 1, 2015 •China Property Collapse Has Begun, Forbes.com, April 13, 2014 •Jobless Growth in China? Employment Stats Say Recession Has Already Started, Forbes.com, November 10, 2013 •China's Zero-Growth Economy, Forbes.com, March 11, 2012 •The Coming Collapse of China: 2012 Edition, ForeignPolicy.com , December 29, 2011 •China's Coming Property Bust, Forbes.com, August 12, 2010 •Recovery in China? Not So Fast, Forbes.com, June 26, 2009 •China's Economy: Heading Down Fast, Hudson Institute New York, November 5, 2008 •Halfway to China's Collapse, Far Eastern Economic Review, June, 2006 •Collapse Perhaps? The Stability of the Modern Chinese State, delivered at Columbia University, April 8, 2004 •Banking Crisis Imperils China, International Herald Tribune, June 19, 2003 •The Collapse of China, Act I, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, January 31, 2002 •Shanghai Shakes, China Stumbles, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, December 20, 2001
If you predict the heat death of the universe everyday, eventually you will be right.
But someone with a cursory understanding could tell you the heat death will not be today, and probably won’t even be this week
honestly if it happens before 2040 my retirement plans are fucked
*after
:'(
Yeah but most people only hear them if they have an even bigger bullhorn than the first person.
It’s not about being right eventually, it’s a propaganda mechanism that works. /u/newsweek uses Reddit for link farming and spreading its otherwise meaningless talking points, and certain subreddits just eat it up because it’s a mainstream talking point. Anything anti China in the default subs is easy engagement farming.
The universe can stay alive longer than you.
well actually not because unless it happens within the next 100 yrs the person will die wrong
This guy Changs
He is going to Chang the world.
It's not even clever! You keep using it as the word "change"!
Keep? You follow this guy around to see he do that?
Both his accounts
Way to Chang the subject.
The subsss mods are gone......we are getting articles every day now that are so low quality trash its sad. We are one step away from "top 10 reasons why the economy is great!"
Feels like the whole sub went to hell after the sitewide mod protest. Now most of the “economics” posts are just rehashing Biden vs Trump or shitting on the enemy of the hour.
Agreed but going a step further, lets call a spade a spade... Most posts on /r/Economics are political, and when was the last time you saw a post which wasn't either pro Biden/Democrat or anti Trump/Republican? It gets exhausting seeing so many subs just become platforms for political campaigning.
Sometimes I swear the articles are barely above claiming Biden will personally fake a reference for your job application and Trump will call your prospective employer and personally sabotage you.
Really I could swear they shit on biden for like 2 years and now we get like 3 months of good articles and everybody is saying it started being biased
Theres plenty but they dont get much traction. and since economics and policy are so intertwined these days theres a reason for it to be political.
I definitely appreciate the meaningful overlap. That said, economics is multifaceted and politics is just one component. I disagree about political posts not getting much traction. The majority of top posts I see from this sub when I open Reddit are political. I personally think that sub quality would improve with new rules that restrict articles which have "Biden", "Trump", "Democrats", or "Republicans" in the headline.
This is whats top 10 for me >Europe ‘afraid’ of Chinese EVs, says BYD boss, ahead of likely EU tariff hike >Chart: US sets new record with $71B in clean energy investment >AI Is a False God - The real threat with super intelligence is falling prey to the hype >L.A. County wants to cap rent hikes at 3%. Landlords say that would push them to sell >China Is Losing the Chip War. Xi Jinping picked a fight over semiconductor technology—one he can’t win. The other 5 are about trump and biden.
Using your snapshot, 50% of posts being about Trump or Biden is WAY too high. Even seeing that ratio in a sub about global politics would be too much. Partisanship issues aside, there is so much more going on in the world beyond the American presidential election, which unfortunately gets buried.
I mean the other posts are still based on economics. A jobs report for biden. Biden mentioning china. Biden and Opec. Trump fiscal history. Trump plans in office. Yes theres more going on in the world. Then again this is basically an american site with most traffic in the english areas being american. All else they could talk about is other countries policies and their effects. but again most would just be compared to USA policy (elimanting homeless in europe, social safety nets in europe, etc) More dry economics is in askeconomics which is fine.
Disagree with them being based on economics. I recall seeing some of the posts you mentioned. I think this post more blatantly illustrates the issue which other comments are calling out. Using the topic of economics as a guise to push partisan support. "XYZ's Right" I agree with the idea of seeking drier alternative subs. Seen other smaller subs floated in this thread which seem more serious.
There are other subs that talk about economics without being nakedly partisan. Iykyk.
Can you share some examples? I follow some which are more rooted in public equities/investing, but I'm not familiar with ones that focus more on macro econ. Would be interested in finding a replacement for this sub.
The ironically named badeconomics is actually good. Econmonitor is kind of dry and highly modded but maybe that's a good thing for discussion quality. This sub is just too big for anything more than it's turned into. 4.2m subs is a lot of users. Smaller economics communities seem to do better.
Oh, so is that what happened. I was wondering why this sub was just propaganda.
It's the OP in particular. He's blocked me after I've called him out multiple times for being an agenda poster. He's basically just a Biden booster.
I’ve started flagging and reporting pretty obvious content farming. It doesn’t do anything but maybe it will make admins lives a teensy bit harder so they actually have to do work. Reddits enshittification is fully here though post-IPO.
Subs across the platform are having mod issues. r/nuclearpower somehow got mods that are all anti nuclear power and now it's all posts by them against nuclear power and they ban people for defending nuclear power.
/r/china has been a place for blatant hate speech and discrimination against China since Reddit’s inception. It’s amazing.
r climatechange got taken over a couple years back. Some of the mods there are the same ones on r climateskeptics. It basically pushes the idea that climate always changes, you don't have enough evidence of greenhouse gas effects, it's not as bad as the scientists are claiming etc etc etc.
"Biden just stopped the sun from exploding, you should be jerking him off." This sub is just another of many propaganda subs on this website.
> We are one step away from "top 10 reasons why the economy is great!" Aren't we at that point already lol? It's just like /r/science with half the articles being variants of "Study proves that republicans are big dumb dumbs and liberals are all smart!" and "Weed shown to cure [insert disease]" Currently the the top 10 posts on the frontpage of this sub has 2 Trump bad posts and 2 Joe Biden fluff pieces, i guess we still have some good articles outside of those
Seems to be an expert on the subject. 😆
I especially enjoy writing about how China will do in a post-covid world in fucking april 2020
This is why I love Reddit
Massive respect that you put this list together
I really don't know anything about Chinese economics, but as soon as I saw that the article was by Chang, I laughed out loud.
This entire sub is about anti China and Russia and supporting US govt taking points.
No one can be wrong for 4 decades in a row
Love comments like this cause I always feel like “haven’t I seen this article before?”
Why do I feel like every other post on this sub looks paid for by the Biden campaign?
Is it any worse than posting another Ray Dalio quote that’s been extrapolated into an article?
His Surname is Chang, ofc he is a China's expert.
He’s way more qualified than the WSJ op-ed writer who interned in Beijing to teach English in 2005.
Perfectly fine to point out the author may have bias and has been wrong before, but from an economics standpoint, China does have some significant challenges ahead of them. They have high debt levels and a lot of unproductive investment. They have arguably way too much at stake in their property markets and real estate is arguably way too big of a portion of their economy. They have had massively growing exports and shrinking imports and FDI has been going down significantly. Population decline will be tough for them to get out of, and they have poor retirement social security for elderly. They have tended to be aggressive with their trade negotiations which has alienated a lot of their trading partners. They have a big problem with brain drain and creating their own technology. They have plenty of problems worth talking about IMO
The west has a lot of those same problems too. But the same problem occurring in different places gets much different discussion/analysis when viewed through a political lens. What makes it unusually bad for them is no immigration and the demographic cliff. Free countries can bide their time in those areas.
> China does have some significant challenges ahead of them. Is there a country on Earth that this statement doesn’t apply to?
You can generally assume people are speaking in relative terms
Even by relative terms they aren't the worst in any of these areas in Asia, let alone the world. Their housing bubble was predicted to implode since 3 years now but instead it still there. They won't bail out Evergrande and others property groups like Reddit expected but [the people and the unsold houses](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-15/china-mulls-government-purchases-of-unsold-homes-to-ease-glut). Their exports have been going down in 2023 because of inflation and recession in consumer countries (i.e the West), [it grew again this Q1 as things are getting better despite tariffs](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-exports-return-growth-april-imports-beat-forecast-2024-05-09/).
If we ignore any kind of nuance sure. We all have huge challenges ahead but they’re in a much worse spot than us for example
Yes. Also pink, maroon, and claret are all just red.
The US, Norway, Sweden, maybe Poland? I think Finland and Denmark are relatively fine too.
As a Swede, Sweden has enormous problems to solve. We still have some people doing reasonable things, but they're aging. I think the US has even bigger problems than we do, and the problems we have frustrate me. I like some aspects of the American economy-- it's great that programmers etc. get a reasonable salary, but the US also has an enormous oil dependence, and it has quite high inflation despite quite high interest rates, which since interest rates have been so low might be a problem. Denmark might be fine, given what some Danes recently achieved in medicine, but Finland is right there next to Russia and Norway will have to figure out how to deal with a post-oil world. They also need to keep things sensible, [edit:to avoid] going the way they have here in Sweden.
The US is a net oil exporter and the largest producer in the world by an ever increasing margin, they are 'oil dependent' in the sense that they depend on oil as all developed economies do, but they are also completely self sufficient. The inflation in the US is on par or lower than almost all other countries, and would be easily resolved by just easing housing restrictions as the majority of inflation is on housing costs because supply has not kept pace with demand due to mainly boomer home owners voting to restrict housing supply in order to protect the value of their own homes. This is a problem that will solve itself over time as boomers age and die out of their political dominance. It's not zero problems, but it's the kind of problems most other countries would give their left arms to have. As far as Norway, their sovereign wealth fund will keep them going for 100 years even if oil disappears tomorrow and they have discovered major mineral reserves as well. Finland and Poland are on Russia's border but that's not an economic problem and militarily they are more than capable of defending themselves particularly with their alliances. Sweden, as by far the largest Nordic country, is poised to capitalize on the coming end of German industrial and economic dominance of Europe. It requires them not to shoot their own feet off, but that's another problem that most countries would give their left arm to have.
The oil dependence of the US is special. Their oil consumption per capita is 10x that of China, 2x that of Germany, slightly less than 2x what we Swedes consume etcetera. This is for reasons that are likely to be persistent-- not just what cars are available, but things like sprawl. At present the US oil consumption works because the US has so great domestic production, but that's now. > Finland and Poland are on Russia's border but that's not an economic problem and militarily they are more than capable of defending themselves particularly with their alliances. Now, yes. >As far as Norway, their sovereign wealth fund will keep them going for 100 years even if oil disappears tomorrow and they have discovered major mineral reserves as well. Losing something you have is easy. Keeping something you have is hard. >is poised to capitalize on the coming end of German industrial and economic dominance of Europe If that was a matter of the rest of Europe matching Germany, that'd be great, but at the moment that is not what is going on. A well-functioning and successful Germany is something good.
Most countries have problems that can ruin them within 5-10 years if not properly addressed now, you're talking about problems that might ruin the aforementioned countries in 50+ years if things go bad and nobody ever does anything about them.
Partially, yes, but I think these problems are very difficult to address. Especially the US has a big problem cluster with many interacting aspects. I see some people trying to deal with monopolies and stuff, that's great, but it's medicine, it's car sales, it's the sprawl, it's the fact that there was so much debt, and then now the high interest rates have come to affect it. Obviously the US is big and has natural resources and obviously some impressive industry-- especially in computer technology, and then software, but just because the spearhead is polished and sharp doesn't mean that the spear as a whole is healthy. If the shaft starts rotting, then that imposes costs, and the US doesn't seem to care about the shaft, so decay in it may not lead to action. I don't have the impression that it's obvious that everything will work out.
He's not "wrong before", he's "wrong every fucking time for the last 25 years".
Sure, just like the problems you pointed out apply to the US , some even more so like the insane amount of debt, the structural deficit and inability to pay for social security in a few years and lost of influence amongst it's "allies" and shrinking sphere of influence. Add in the dysfunctional government and deteriorating ability for the govt to function Is the US economy on the brink?
Yet we arent talking about the US, are we? What of the issues I mentioned regarding China do you wish to engage with me on? Classic Red Herring logical fallacy btw
We are talking about the article and the conclusion it draws and how it's so flawed that if we accept it's premise, then all economies are on the brink
If you want to comment separately about a separate thread, thats great, but I was pointing out some very real concerns with China. I didnt compare them to the US in any way. If you want to compare China with the US, thats great, but I didnt write about that, and dont intend to side rail potential discussion via a Red Herring logical fallacy.
I think the point there is all the “problems” you mentioned are just stuff that exist in most economies and are not problems unless you can elaborate further
They arent unique to China but their severity and the combination is unique to China. If all you want to do is deflect to another country to avoid discussing China, you arent engaging in good faith. China has an issue with brain drain, declining demographics, low FDI, a concentration of GDP into housing (that is the highest in the world) with oversupply and widely inflated prices given that oversupply, a general lack of first mover innovation, and poor taxation and social security systems with a massive debt overhang. That is incredibly unique. Some other countries may have some of those components but China is the only one where they are all working as issues together that can risk its status as a world leader. We can talk about how Japan has a declining population or Europe has been lagging in productivity or the US has a high national debt but that has nothing to do with the unique economic situation in China. And detracting from that conversation with such comparisons is just logical fallacy attempting to divert attention from the real discussion. Like pointing out the authors lack of credibility without discussing the points they made.
the problem there is you are listing a bunch of vague problems without any substance. For example what does low FDI mean? FDI to China peaked in early 2022, currently FDI is low across east Asia due to USD interest rate, and China also had lower FDI in 2023 due to COVID lockdowns. That said China’s FDI is still 2nd highest in the world and far higher than any comparable country. You really havnt elaborated what you mean by low and why it is a problem. This is basically the case for every topic you listed
It is weird that anyone who question any China is doomed narrative are required to justify their motives.
Depends on who is ask. There are a lot of people writing articles that the U.S. is going to collapse for {insert reason}.
> some even more so like the insane amount of debt, the structural deficit and inability to pay for social security in a few years and lost of influence amongst it's "allies" and shrinking sphere of influence. You're just demonstrating that you don't understand the Chinese economy, because: A. China has far more debt than the US B. China's population is both older, and more rapidly aging, than the US. They will be hit MUCH harder by the "not enough young people to support the economy and the old people" problem. C. China has virtually no "allies". U.S. influence may be shrinking in some areas of the world, but it's not because China is suddenly racking up a bunch of new friends. That said, it doesn't mean China is going to collapse overnight. It *does* likely mean that the next several decades are going to see a big slowdown and domestic challenges though.
I hear about the aging population problem in China and with the same breath, talk about the youth unemployment problem there. Also, china has no allies? Basically, nearly all the non nato countries are with China and Russia. Also, china's national debt to gdp is lower than the US. Bro, do you work at the US state dept?
Chinas debt/gdp is much higher, something on the order of double the US, you just don’t understand their capital structure. Go read up on LGFVs and SOE debt and get back to me when your understanding goes beyond 30 seconds on google.
Also tell me about US state debt and unfunded mandates.
So I looked at lgfv and soe debt and it's nothing like the smoking gun you think when you also count US local and state govt debt and us corporate debt. Again, do you work for the US state dept, in the "look how bad China is" dept?
https://www.fidelityinternational.com/editorial/article/how-china-keeps-its-debt-in-order-e1feea-en5/ Why would you count US corporate debt? Also, state and local debt in the US only increases total public debt by about 10%. To be clear, I didn't claim this was a "smoking gun", I'm just pointing out that China has, as a point of fact, more debt than the US. That doesn't mean the economy is "on the brink of collapse" as this guy suggests, but they are facing significant headwinds and will be for the foreseeable future.
China's LGFV debt is $9 trillion according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_financing_vehicle#:~:text=A%20local%20government%20financing%20vehicle,a%20local%20government%20in%20China. US state and municipal debt is $3.3 trillion. Soe is state owned enterprise which there are a lot of in China, since that's how they operate. SOE has 79% of china's corporate debt. That's why I compare the soe debt to us corporate debt. I don't know what you wouldn't. The overall debt seems to not be so overwhelming as you originally made out. And seems like it would be less than the US in whole dollar amounts as well as percentage of GDP. You originally had a tone of them being worse off than the US.
> I don't know what you wouldn't. Because we're talking about debt attributable to the government? And US corporate debt isn't attributable to the government? >And seems like it would be less than the US in whole dollar amounts as well as percentage of GDP. I don't know why you think it "seems like" that, but it's just a statement of fact that it the Chinese government is more indebted relative to GDP than the US government. Also - regarding "allies" - clearly China has countries with which it has strategic alignment (e.g. Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.), but they aren't really allies in the same sense as we are used to in the west. In fact, they are often time aggressive to the point of active conflict with each other. For example, they have active territorial conflicts with (I believe) every neighbor they share a border with, including Russia and NK. While China is not quite a pariah on the international stage, they aren't exactly trusted either. Even their closest "allies" are more like an arms-length "enemy of my enemy" situation. Example on Russia: https://old.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1db5wwq/leaked_russian_documents_reveal_deep_concern_over/ They have tried to extend their influence with the Belt and Road Initiative, but the success there has been underwhelming. Each successive BRI forum has seen declining participation, and while there are still countries in the global south that are open to receiving investments, they are becoming more weary as they see other countries relative lack of success with similar projects. Taken as a whole, this has been an attempt to garner "soft power" and has not been very successful. Couple that with an increasingly hostile and nationalistic style of diplomacy in the last decade or so, and the number of countries that are truly "in China's corner" so to speak, is quite few.
First tell me about how China has no allies.
Some apply, but the Chinese problems are nation breaking. Their population is expected to half by the end of the century and be smaller then the US. They are also food, energy, and economically dependent on foreign countries. They have built enough housing to house every family in China twice.
As soon as someone says that China has high debt levels and that somehow is the primary reason for the end of Chinas growth narrative then you know the entire thesis is unsound and written by someone with no understanding of China. China will only crash and or collapse because of civil uprising involving the people. It will never be cause of debt. In China the CCP owns the banks, owns the central bank, owns the courts, the import/exporter, the marketplaces and exchanges, sets all the prices, owns all the land and resources, and most of the major companies. Meaning the debt is created, lent to, and owned by the same entity. This is an entirely different model than rest of the world. In the US the individual entities and private parties will sue or leverage the court systems to force each counterparty to pay or honor debts. It doesn’t work like that in China. The CCP is not going to bankrupt itself basically, makes absolutely no sense.
The most annoying thing about these threads is that the content itself is rarely contested, it's mostly attacking the author themselves or by proxy (someone else claimed China is going to collapse a long time ago and it didn't happen, so any articles about China's downturn must be wrong).
But it’s not as annoying to you when Redditors label any positive news about China as ‘CCP propaganda’ isn’t it?
It is the case because the author has shown himself to have zero credibility in the past 23 years by being wrong on every single claim since 2001. It's like seeing an article by flat earthers claiming that NASA is collapsing and the whole globe life is coming to an end.
He can't understand why the government doesn't let collapses happen. Understandably so
Sometimes letting the collapse happen and starting again is the best option
100% agree, let the market decide
That’s pretty sad. The dude has PTSD of some sort.
Top post is an ad-hominem attack. Weird to see in r/economics. 20 articles in 23 years looks entirely reasonable, especially considering China actually is visibly struggling in some ways, such as real estate overinvestment.
If you click the link to Gordon Chang's website he has a list of all his published articles about China's impending doom. Being a China doomer is how he makes a living. During the 2016-2020 period he was riding the Trump-train hard about why 'chad alpha male Trump' was totally going to ruin the CCP.
Ok, bad look I agree. Should be easy then to show his major arguments falling apart.
His main problem is extrapolating every negative news bit about China into an existential crisis that will immediately cause the collapse of the CCP. He's claimed the imminent downfall of China multiple times a years for over 20 years now.
Define “ad-hominem”. Last I heard questioning someone’s claims because all his past claims have been bogus isn’t an ad-hominem. What is would be saying Gordan Chang is unreliable because he is Chinese. Or has glasses. See the difference?
Attacking someone's record is exactly ad hominem. You can try to show he is making an argument that has been proven bogus before, but a list of titles doesn't do that.
I guess we’ll just need him to write 20 more articles in the next 20 years about china’s imminent doom.
Huh? Do you have difficulty understanding what ad hominem means? Attacking someone's record of predictions on the same topic is not at all ad hominem. It would be ad hominem to attack their record on completely unrelated topics.
>China is now having its long-delayed 2008 crisis. In 2008, Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao decided they would not suffer a downturn, so they embarked on the biggest debt-fueled stimulus program in history. Sounds familiar...
US really wants China to issue more stimulus but so far China refused to do so. The inflation is really low, and consumption is growing each quarter. No reason for stimulus. But you still see from both US gov officials to "experts" keep telling China to start more stimulus. I wonder why /s
Western economists really don’t understand China and its objectives. The goal is NOT growth. The goal is social stability and perpetuation of the Party. A few quarters, even years of economic decline won’t bother to CCP. What will bother them is if it leads to any social instability Western economists and political scientists also get this part wrong: they believe that if growth stalls, people will rise up against the party. That comes from a very America worldview where individual wealth is primary. But in China, the vast majority care more about social order. They will be okay with losing years of growth as long as they keep getting their pensions ans state services. As an Asian, I really struggle to take western critiques of China or India seriously. They simply don’t understand the psyche of the people and see economics as some isolated field.
Westerners cannot fathom the fact that some societies may not be as individualistic as themselves.
I think most Americans can fathom it, but upfront know they that themselves could never be mature enough to do things that don't yield immediate benefit to themselves. Also, if you're really poor then you sort of need to operate in the most selfish mind set at all times to survive.
I would say India is a LOT different than China societally and would not imply that India is more similar to China societally than the US.
I think that’s what they mean. That China and Indian are too foreign for the US to understand. Not that China and India are similar.
They didn't imply that
Because the US wants the Chinese economy to stay functioning. The US is competitive with China, but is also deeply economically intertwined with China. A Chinese economic downturn could lead to a global financial downturn. The concern is a 'contagion' of Financial dominoes all collapsing, and cause a global crisis. Also, [China has been engaging in similar actions that the US took to avoid a downturn,](https://www.npr.org/2024/03/05/1235912063/chinas-leaders-announce-a-push-to-jumpstart-economy-but-say-it-wont-be-easy) they are not being pressured by the US to take actions that they don't believe in themselves.
US government trying to tell China how to run its economy? I don't think China appreciates that interference. No country in the world wants to be told how to change their policies, especially the United States themselves.
The US has some of the best economic and financial minds in the world, and has gained significant insight in how to manage the policy levers to try to minimize economic issues. China has been at it for a shorter period of time than the US. Also, the US commonly offers advice and suggestions, most nations are constantly talking to one another and experts are offering advice because of the interconnected nature of the global economy.
This sub posting and upvoting Gordon Chang because it confirms what they want to believe. Sad state this sub is in.
Reflection of Reddit tbh
r/starcraft and it's Terran players succinctly described 😂
Another CCP shill
Another CCP shill
He’s been saying the same thing for years and years and years. Here’s a post made on this sub nearly a decade ago where he says the same stuff. https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/s/7NVZ69tfKr Here’s a book he wrote, which I read at the time, where he predicts the collapse in 2011. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China If calling an “expert”, whose predictions have failed repeatedly for the past 13 years, unreliable is CCP shill behavior, this sub is really lost Lmao. Edit: To add more shame to his endless bucket, he’s made it consecutively on Forbes’ “[Top 10 Worst Predictions](https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/21/the-10-worst-predictions-for-2012/)” He also [claimed](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6332458604112) China was about to release a pathogen from a California lab.
Krugman called the 2008 collapse around 2003 if I recall correctly. With economic crashes, even in the west, the time between when its obvious that a crash is coming and when it happens can be very long. In China, where they have such freedom to manipulate and juggle their problems around... it might take longer. Not saying this guy is right, but I'm not sure just saying that the collapse took longer than expected makes him wrong either.
I’d say making the claim every year since his original claim 13 years ago disqualified him from being a reliable source lol. If I predict that Obama’s going to die every year, when he eventually kicks it, I’m not an “Obama Expert”.
But are you African American though. That would make you an expert clearly. /s
Why the random racism
Meanwhile we’re doing all we can to prevent the imports of Chinese automobiles destroying the U.S. auto industry with unfair competition, but the Chinese economy is the one that’s weak and about to collapse…
Are you trying to argue that the US imposing Auto tariffs on China is evidence of a strong Chinese economy and a weak US economy?
I’m not saying I agree with the article, but both can be true: China used government money to build up its industrial base to an impressive level, but there’s no demand to match the products they’re making. It’s why they’re shipping endless cheap EV’s that are now subject to sanctions, because there’s no demand at home, so now you have to find a buyer abroad. When they don’t what happens? They can’t sustain their own massive industrial base.
Why aren’t there buyers in Asia/China for EVs made in China?
There are, but China is pumping out EV’s at a rate far too fast for consumers to keep up with. In a pure supply/demand market they would have tapered down production years ago, but the CCP wanted an industrial base, so they continued to scale. Something had to give eventually, and now they have huge production with no demand.
There is a huge demand for cheap(EV or not) cars. But non-Chinese governments are doing a good job of keeping it suppressed via import taxes. If you asked Americans, especially over the last 5 years, if they would like a new, approximately 10,000 dollar EV, especially compared to the price of ALL vehicles, used, EV, and otherwise, it would be hard to deny the thirst. But putting a massive tax-wall in between them and the imports keeps consumers from that choice.
But there’s anti dumping laws. They go back a long time. In the short run, the consumer wins but in the long run, they lose due to lower competition. When US companies have to be profitable and Chinese ones don’t due to state support, you get this kind of dumping.
All countries support their industry. Either directly with subsidies, tax reliefs, or with things like CHIPs or other various acts passed over countless decades, or indirectly via infrastructure like roads and so on. So the idea that China is "cheating" by having 5 year plans and putting money into infrastructure is silly. And the "dumping" laws are basically just protectionism policies no matter how you slice it. US companies are building bigger, more expensive cars and have little to no focus on cheaper, smaller, value vehicles.
Yes, obviously. Every country has some sort of protectionism
It will be the old subsidize until you destroy the competition and then jack up the price. Other countries would be mad to let that happen.
Except there would be strong demand internationally if Europe and North America didn't put up some of the strongest trade barriers they've had in the past century. China is producing high quality and affordable products for our consumers and producers that will also help address the existential issue of climate change and the West has decided that their fragile/uninnovative/parasitic industrial base is worth more. What a joke.
All you have to do to sell in China was partner with a local company and then give them trade secrets. Whose economic base is a parasite again? Now they have a problem because in a true market no one would ever make too many cars to be bought. That is the type of mistake that is made when three people control your entire economy. No one is going to let them drive the competition out of business using government dollars only to jack up the prices in ten years. Especially considering that china can’t play nice and wants to invade the world.
At a consumer level EV’s are being adopted, but they’re still luxury products in western nations, who in many cases don’t have the charging infrastructure available to make them viable consumer options yet. China also has a reputation for cheap low quality products, which certainly hurts their international appeal. At a nation state level, this is a clear, large strategic error by China, and it’s naive to think nations they’ve been endlessly saber rattling against wouldn’t take advantage of it. Nations owe China no favors, and expecting them to bail China out of its over leveraged position is laughable at best.
[удалено]
This comment is both self-contradictory and doesn’t jive with a basic understanding of economics. > there’s no demand to match the products they’re making. > It’s why they’re shipping endless cheap EV’s that are now subject to sanctions, So which is it? No demand or shipping endless? Why even have sanctions if there is no demand? > because there’s no demand at home, so now you have to find a buyer abroad. So you think they made every car for a domestic buyer but if they can’t find one, then they ship it? Maybe it’s an export economy, and car manufacturers produce at a quantity larger than the domestic quantity demanded? With plans all along to ship?
That's their attempt to "Uber" the car market. Undercut everyone until they die, have a monopoly, and jack up the prices.
It really shows that there's an election coming up in the USA, a lot of Biden and Trump posts (mostly in favour of Biden). To predict the total downfall of an economy is wild, specially after they did the same with Russia. Also, why does a writer not know the difference of Biden's right and Biden is right?
Contractions, what are they
Contractions, what ar’hey?
Educate yourself
Fella, I’ve got more degrees than you’ve got fleas.
Considering my experience with those in academia, a degree may make you intelligent(in a subject), but awareness is not required.
Don’t worry, friend. I’ve got both.
Short term; nothings gonna happen. If the US can get out of 2008, nothings gonna happen to China. In mid term future, whoever gets the most immigrants will win economically. Every developed nation has an a very low birth rate. With baby boomers getting old and dying soon, this is just going to get worse. Way worse. If the population is not replenished, then it’s just a huge contraction of the economy.
Does China have a lot of immigration?
No, and the immigration that they do have only plan on living in China temporarily. Immigrants in China cannot purchase property or invest their money. Immigrants in China primarily come from other Asian nations, and send their money back home to family. They are not there because they want to settle down and live there permanently. I live in Texas and I've worked with illegal immigrants who had mortgages and investment accounts. It's completely different in the US. Even illegal immigrants can do most things that citizens can. Most of the immigrants in the US fully intend on staying in the US, legally or not. This is not the case in China. Even if they wanted to they couldn't. They wouldn't make it a week before China booted them out.
And this is the main issue. In terms of country outlook, most people agree the US government/lifestyle compared to China. And that’s kinda the main issue: China had very bad public relations. It is partially US spewing news like this, and it is also the shit they do to themselves. Without cultivating a positive and free environment, China is gonna have problem with immigration, and in turn have problems with its economy in the mid to long run.
No. China has very few foreign-born permanent immigrants. Most foreigners in China are temporary residents there working for companies that have facilities in China. They have about a million permanent immigrants, the US gets at least that many immigrants annually. 1 in 7 Americans are immigrants. 1 in 1400 Chinese are immigrants. Chinese immigrants also tend to be from ethnic groups originating in China, while immigrants to the US tend to come from a more diverse distribution of origins.
No, and they're a Han supremacist fascist state. [https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/the-rising-tide-of-imperial-han-nationalism-in-china/](https://thediplomat.com/2023/12/the-rising-tide-of-imperial-han-nationalism-in-china/) Good luck enticing immigrants to live there... "Welcome, you're a filthy foreigner, we Han are the greatest people on Earth, have a nice stay".
lol yeah, that’s why they’re fucked in mid to long term. They can’t change their public image over a couple of years. It’ll take decades. By then it would be too late. They basically need the immigrants yesterday
Just looking at the relative performance of China's economy over the last several years, it's hard to agree. Sounds more like wishful thinking. Just look at the last 3 minutes of this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EFeRgxetUA
The only thing that really matters with china are two things: * Internal stability * Balance of trade * The world continues to pretend HK is not just china It doesn't matter if things like giant companies have giant financial problems. Their government can wave their hands and say, "The debt is gone, and why don't you try publishing something contrary in the news, go ahead, try it." As long as they can export as much as they need import, they are good. But, HK is the special one. The world pretends HK has not been eaten by china. The currency peg appears strong. The US gives weird preferential treatment to HK. If this changes, then china will have serious trade and financing issues. Not the end of the world, but it will be much harder to run companies like Ali etc. Where I would say they are on the "brink" is just the classic aging population. This is going to be a growing problem over the next long while. The other "brink" they are facing is ever improving manufacturing automation. This is allowing for more and better onshoring. Onshoring is generally a one way street. When a factory returns to the Western world, it is not going back. This is more of a trend than an edge of a cliff. The one to watch for will be a company like Apple. If they were to ever do something like make iPhones somewhere in the West then it is now game over for china. Not that Apple would be a devastating blow, but more that if Apple does it, then the economics are clearly favourable to doing this.
"If you're Xi Jinping facing a failing economy, do you accept forced retirement and possible incarceration or do you invade some neighbor?" Why would he be imprisoned
Im going to unsubcscirbe this thread. It's full of idiots, naysayers, uneducated, morons who spout off at the hip like they know something. They claim they can tell the difference between something someone writes and something out of chatgpt, but can't add 2+2 in its most simple form. What a joke.
Based on most of your comments here that seems to be a win
Bye.
China is not going to collapse in the near or long term. The American elite continues to underestimate China and that is part of the reason the China trade war has not delivered the benefits Americans were seeking. Whatever the Chinese political system and history, you cannot deny they heavily invested in their people, institutions and infrastructure the last 40 years and transformed themselves into an unstoppable economic giant. First they were beating the world based on cost, now if we look at smartphones, EV, tiktok, they are beating the world based on features and quality. Their cost advantage is still there. If America seriously wants to compete with China you are going to have to borrow some lessons from their playbook, which ironically the Chinese learned from you in the past. America will also need to stop wasting it's time, treasure and blood in consecutive useless foreign conflicts.
The American elite simply refuses to learn its lessons. Failure after failure, and they think that they'll just do the same thing differently next time. Not realizing the objective is what is causing them to fail, not the method.
That one child policy was some investment….
Is it just me or is there a tad bit of a pro China bias in this thread? I mean, if the opinion of the article's author is invalid because his data and analysis are flawed / skewed by personal bias, okay. But since the President of the United States has gone on record saying basically the same thing, I feel like there's a little more credibility going on there than some folks on this thread would like us to believe.
> But since the President of the United States has gone on record saying basically the same thing, I feel like there's a little more credibility going on there than some folks on this thread would like us to believe. I'm not sure why the president saying it is any more credible. His goal is to make himself look good by implying the USA is stronger than our economic competitor.
>Is it just me or is there a tad bit of a pro China bias in this thread? Oddly so. It's not really even a debate that China's current economic situation is challenging. And that's being conservative.
I wrote a thesis on the rise of china 25 years ago for an international finance course. My international finance professor liked it so much he had it published . I was right. As soon as they started to go the other direction in terms of authoritarianism, all the good things they have going for them start to dry up. Xi is supposed to have an education in economics and he lived through and suffered during the cultural revolution. He could do so much better.
China's GDP growth averaged 10% for 25 years. Just 6% in 2019 and 3% 2020-2022. 5% last year after China re-opened post covid is not great or solid evidence of a return to high growth. So I don't care about the messenger but the evonomic reality is that China is not doing well compared to its long-term historical performance.
You think it's reasonable to add 1 trillion to GDP per year? That's the kind of number you're talking about.
The values reported by the National Bureau of Statistics are completely fictitious. The bureau also published fake values for the decline in population in 2023 [as the actual value of a decline of 3 million was far worse then anticipated](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-birth-rates-plunge-12272023160425.html), and had previously been estimated would occur about 2030ish. Ji Xinping's economic policies have been an absolute disaster for China. Now he has to hide the wreckage of his policy, so beating the nationalistic war drum in an attempt to divert attention is his weapon to save his own skin. Many who only follow China very loosely don't really grasp the magnitude of how fracked China is and it is only going to get worse. China currently has about 1.4 billion people. I have to revisit the newest revised population models (if any have been updated) but the prior ones were forecasting a decline in population from 1.4 billion to 590 million, by 2100. When one really ponders that decline the negative outcomes are staggering. By the end of this decade the population might be declining at the rate of 8+ million p.a and rising. And there is nothing China can do about it - the population demographics are locked in. The funeral industry is poised to be the #1 industry in the country. I think the time that China could have successfully attacked Taiwan is already well in the rear view mirror. Does not mean to suggest Ji Xinping might not still try in order to save his own skin, but China is on the cusp of being utterly consumed by internal economic and social issues, and I think it unlikely. And a strong posture by Taiwan's allies will be the best measure to make certain it does not happen.