Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is going to be the economics story of 2016, the one where China decides to jump in on the world stage and discovers the limitations imposed by participating in that stage. What I hope we end up with is a much more transparent view of the Chinese economy.

View on HN

A transparent view would be 1-2 percent gdp growth, 300 percent gasp/debt ratio, bankrupt shadow banking, bankrupt commodity related state companies, a trillion left that can be used from reserve, 800 billion per year capital outflow, etc. not sure China can even take that first step. Not to mention lack of global consumer brands, pollution, corruption, etc

I expect it is somewhere between the complete dystopia you suggest and the rosy double digit growth the party suggests :-).

But yes, it would be good to know what the reality is.

check my links above. but also, do you think a normal economy needs the government to

- limit citizens withdraws abroad

- prevent majority holders of more than 5% of a company to sell their shares

- stop the entire stock market from trading after a 7% decline

- limit $50k/year limit transfer out of china

Haven't most of those limits (Minus the stock market ones) been in place for a number of years?

Also, most stock markets have stop-trading circuit breakers.

If China's GDP has been growing at ~1-2%/yr, why does the air in Beijing look like soup?

It's been like that for a long time. They shut down a ton of factories for a month to have clear skies for the olympics in 2008. It's been getting worse, but I don't know that it's all that much worse.

the stock market stopping trading after a drop is a property of pretty much all stock markets right?

As to the other points, that seems much more like social/corruption control than anything else.

sharetea is closer than the govt figures.

Smoking gun is capital flight by Chinese themselves.

> 1-2 percent gdp growth, 300 percent gasp/debt ratio ...

Are these numbers real? If so, what are they based on? If they are just examples of what might be found under the hood, that's fine; I'd just be interested in some reliable non-official economic numbers.

No, just a 'greatest hits' compilation of the same things China detractors have been complaining about since 1995. Their analysis is no better than the already dubious "official" numbers.

> a 'greatest hits' compilation of the same things China detractors have been complaining about since 1995

That's what we would expect to see in a bubble, criticisms that aren't coming true until the day it pops. How do we distinguish this situation from a bubble?

If it were possible to distinguish it reliably, we'd get rich (and the bubbles wouldn't happen in the first place).

2% gdp growth http://www.barrons.com/articles/anne-stevenson-yang-why-xi-j...

300% gdp/debt http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-01/china-shoul...

bankrupt shadow banks http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/06cc9b9c-44c4-11e5-b3b2-1672f...

bankrupt state commodity firms http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-14/the-next-c...

not much reserve reserve http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1756239-china-may-have-to-se...

500 billions in capital flight in Q3 http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2015/11/01/a-half-tr...

I'd heard that China is going in debt before but how that is even possible? I though US is getting pushed in debt because of China. If everyone is going on debt, who the hack is giving all these loans?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com