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Comment by adamnemecek | Hacker News Reader

Is it just me or has China been doing some crazy regulatory stuff recently. Idk if there's an overall mosaic I'm missing or if these are unrelated.

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Yes there has recently been :

- promise to block all VPN services from accessing blocked website

- law to hold chat group owners responsible to what the members say (controverse political talk or gambling for example can lead to arrests)

- most of casual barbecue that were held in the streets last summer have been forced to close this year in my area

- tightening and more scrutinity on visa applications for foreigners (there has been some abuse so this is legitimate)

- more random drug tests and work visa checks on foreigners (again there are many illegal teachers so can't blame them)

- ban of many cheeses (like blue cheese)

- ban of Winnie the pooh from social media following a picture mocking Xi as looking like Winnie

China is getting more and more authoritarian and strict. Some of these moves are because of the big party congress in one month where Xi is excepted to renew his term

Why would they ban blue cheese?

Is drug use high among foreigners or is that just a harrassement control to keep them in mental check, so they fear the unpredictability of the government and the power they hold over individual fate?

My guess is food safety. Not quite real food safety, but also not made up. Some European cheeses are not available in here Australia because of regulations about how dairy products have to be processed (Pasteurisation I guess).

Not only might that logic work in China too, but the culture is less tolerant of a food-stuff what is after all curdled milk with a fungal infection. (And we in the west get grossed out by chicken feet!).

Wait til you hear how bread is made!

Food safety is a great way to backdoor agricultural import restrictions. Europe has been doing it for decades on GMO's.

True, and in Australia that could be somewhat plausible case that it is protectionism. But in China probably has no cheese-protectionism lobby. Though I suppose it might just be someone angling for baksheesh.

Wasn't the American GMO's studies bullshit for decades as well? If anything, Europe has led the way in strict and unbiased testing.

In the west we eat a lot more chicken feet than people think. Nearly any decent chicken stock is going to be made in part with chicken feet as they provide a lovely gelatinous component to the stock.

Isn't cheese from raw milk also banned in the US? Think this was a topic then EU and US discussed a free-trade deal.

Raw milk products are certainly not as safe as pasteurised products but many people are willing to take the risk to enjoy the product.

No, cheese from raw milk is not banned in the US. There are various regulations on it however. The raw milk cheese has to be aged at least 60 days and labeled as unpasteurized.

Because it is called so, if the mold on the cheese was red, I believe its consumption would be only encouraged.

But blue cheese, many blue stuff is banned in China, not only cheese.

For anyone reading this and thinking "wtf, no barbecues?!?", this is ostensibly some kind of anti-pollution measure to combat the extreme smog in China (though in practice likely just to make people think they are taking the issue super-seriously while refusing to address the actual problem).

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/chinas-pollutio...

You mean to tell me, if I go visit China they may _force_ me to do a drug test?

More likely, they will politely request that you comply and tell you to leave the country if you refuse.

agreed. foreigner in China will be most likely treated as superior class.

Only if you are unfortunate enough to be in a bar which gets raided at the wrong time (ie bars which are believed to have had drug dealers or drug users in the past) OR if you were in contact with a dealer who got busted.

It happens but it's still pretty rare

The scary thing is that if you are tested positive I believe you would end up in jail for a month before getting deported, even if you consumed legal drugs in your country (ie cannabis)

If you deny to take the test you would definitively be in trouble, at best you would get deported

> The scary thing is that if you are tested positive I believe you would end up in jail for a month before getting deported, even if you consumed legal drugs in your country (ie cannabis)

This would probably happen in many countries. If I were to smoke cannabis legally and this showed up in a drug test in the US (e.g. stopped while driving) you could also be arrested as a foreigner. With many drugs the effects are not as clear as with alcohol, a test can show up positive even though effects are long gone.

This a meaningless list of random things. Come to India and I can give you a list 10 times this size which will change every 10 days.

So in other words... another meaningless list of random transient things?

I'm by no means an expert on this, but the timing for several of these likely relates to the once every 5 years National Congress of the Communist Party of China occurring next month. There are competing factions, and it's probable that some of these decisions benefit one over another.

Why is it "crazy"? They are a sovereign nation.

So any action by a sovereign nation can always be described as "sane" or "reasonable"?

To me, calling them "crazy" is insulting to their culture and people. For the label to be justified, you'd have to argue the action contributes to ruin.

For example, I think the Venezuelan leadership has made crazy decisions that are being borne out now.

But, I would not put a ban on BBQ in that same category.

No you don't have to argue that, what on earth are you talking about? Good god...

Look at the way the word is used in this context. "Crazy regulatory..." That doesn't insult the culture or people, that's specifically talking about regulations. It's widely accepted that laws can be "crazy", i.e. silly, stupid, unreasonable, in every country. It's not a personal attack on the people.

Contributed to ruin...wow

That gives them the right to do crazy things. That doesn’t stop it from being crazy.

China's economy is crashing, and Chinese government is panicking.

Can you give any more details on "China's economy is crashing"? I must admit I haven't heard anything negative about their economy, thought it was on the up and up.

Exactly it can't keep going up and up.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017...

True but it hasn't crashed yet.

AMP links? Really? Here's the non crapified link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/08/15/chinas-debt-b...

Thanks. People sharing amp links... it was only a matter of time, and really, really sucks.

They have a lot of debt building up as well as a huge real estate bubble that makes SF look tame. However, it hasn't crashed yet.

It's all sovereign debt, denominated in a token they can create at will. It's not like a household with an out of control credit card habit.

That means they can't go bankrupt; it doesn't mean the debt isn't a problem.

Sure. But it still can't grow forever without dragging down the real economy, at some point soon growth has to stop, and then what?

From the PRC's perspective, the yuan is a just a tool to stimulate productive activity in their population towards the goals expressed in state budgets. If they can muster the political will, they can simply levy highly progressive taxes to reduce inflation and keep on spending. There is nothing stopping them, ideologically.

If growth is mostly currently debt fueled, that growth can easily stop and reverse when the debt is pulled back. Recession at best, depression at worst, definitely there will be a few crashes along the way.

Do you think real estate can really be sustained at it's current levels? Much of it has been bought as a speculative asset (no property taxes makes that easy) with the idea that it can only keep going up because of urbanization. However, farmers are generally poor not rich, it is not clear where the "bigger idiots" are going to come from.

China's tax burden is already high for those that pay them. Going after those that don't at the high end is difficult because they tend to be officials or highly connected to officials in the first place.

The purpose of the growth, from a governance perspective, is to keep the population satisfied through a rising standard of living, and to continue to develop the country through sane budget allocations. They can continue to do that using debt, because the only risk from doing so is inflation, which they can keep low with taxes on the present debt holders.

The housing market may crash: I was talking about the claim that economy in general crashing. But I think the PRC might see a housing market crash as desirable, as it would raise the standard of living for most citizens. They certainly seem bent on slowing it down. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-property-in...

China does have economic problems, but they are more problems of political will, not intractable from a strictly economic perspective. The solution involves the country's elite taking a haircut.

It is difficult to see a case where housing crashes and the economy in general doesn't. They see a housing crash as desirable, for sure, but too much economic activity right now is tied up in real estate and infrastructure investment, they know how painful it will be. So they keep pumping up housing....

That's not how government debt works. There is no ceiling on the amount of debt you can have except in extreme cases like 2-3x debt to GDP ratio which China is nowhere near. Government debt is really just a record keeping system for funding and not really debt like you and me have. Look up US debt and how it works to fund the economy.

Velocity is important. China went from no debt to 2X in less than a decade. If they are 3X a few years from now, how will that work. They have to deleverage somehow, or at least stop the growth.

It's not all sovereign debt. The amount of debt owed by Chinese companies has also been exploding over the last few years. It's possible they're taking out all that debt to make productive investments, but the analyses I've seen suggest that there's way too much debt for that to be the case.

Now maybe the argument is that in a crisis this would all become sovereign debt (i.e. the government would bail the companies out and assume their debts). But that has its own issues, including the need for higher taxation to service the debt.

Have any sources to back this up?

If you understand the population distribution in the PRC, have spent time in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 city, and think deeply about economic growth, the idea that the Chinese economy could "crash" is laughable: there is a vast pool of emerging customers that will continue to fuel growth over the foreseeable future. The question is whether global trends, especially related to climate change driven instability, will interfere in the emergence of the socialist/communist market economy. If you find a contradiction in the conception of a socialist/communist market economy, check Dominic Losurdo's "Has China Turned to Capitalism?—Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism" published in the March 2017 issue of International Critical Thought.

Although a Socialist (using this in the sense of lower-stage Communist, rather than as Marx used it as synonymous with Communism) market economy can be practicable, China does not have it - most notably because there is wage labour and private property is protected by the State. The State is also not in democratic control of the workers. These rule out China from being either a Socialist country or having a Socialist (market or not) economy.

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