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Comment by NicoJuicy | Hacker News Reader

I have my sincere doubts about this.

China always had a requirement to grow 6% for every city. So I believe some numbers are inflated ( mostly about real estate eg. Ghost cities, ..). This doesn't give many issues, because there is actual growth.

The reasoning goes that when the growth slows, the entire pyramid goes crumbling down ( debts).

As weird as it is, I think it's an objective overview of everything China related. It's a personal hunch of all the FOMO I read about China and can't support it with links.

The reasoning I follow is: expansion internally (China), expansion externally ( requirement) with Africa / one road one belt, knocking down on bank fraud, no export of money internationally, ... In the process, trying to become too big too fail.

We'll see if I'm right about this.

Ps. I could be wrong, so comments are appreciated

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My understanding is that both of you can be right.

The "Chinese government" is not a singular, monolithic entity in the same way the "US Government" is actually a bunch of departments, branches and jurisdiction levels each with competing and sometimes differing interests and goals. (but yes, it is more unified in China in the sticking to party line).

The Chinese federal government has been wanting to make this re-balancing for a long time (a shift away from exports towards domestic consumption, and shifts from inefficient state owned enterprises to companies that can operate more efficiently and are "market oriented").

Where you are also correct is that many of the inflated GDP numbers and "inefficient" investments / capital towards things like ghost cities are mostly driven by state governments, in their attempt to meet the "goals" as stated by the federal government.

> and shifts from inefficient state owned enterprises to companies that can operate more efficiently and are "market oriented")

Do you have evidence of this? Isn't one of the biggest US complaints that many Chinese businesses are indistinguishable from the government?

I've seen it in various economics articles/readings on the topic regarding the governments long term economic strategy. (see article below I found)

You are also right - yes one of the biggest complains IS that many Chinese businesses are "owned" by the government with lots of influence there. However, the big resistive force here preventing this further breakup is that they are such huge employers, and it is not politically easy to reduce and remove so many people from the payrolls. So it has been a slow process.

Here is an article roughly related: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/12/30/china-star...

I was reading an article some time back some Chinese businesses in order to get loans had to give a stake in their company to the government. It is not something heard about often but gives the government even more sway over private businesses.

Are they giving a stake to the government, or to the government officials? Because the latter is just plain corruption, and to be honest isn't very surprising anywhere.

I'm sure there are a few technocrats that have this as one of their goals in China but (note: this is speculation) I doubt the reason there is friction from moving away from state sponsored businesses is changing payrolls.

Communist party leaders own huge portions of their state sponsored businesses and directly benefit from their success. Chinese leaders don't want fair competition, they want to be rich.

Yes - but deploying capital in the way that brings the greatest returns is the way to become rich. Many SOEs either break even or make little money, especially when considering their size.(feel free to do research on that). You are saying they wouldn’t want to sell off some of these/make them more efficient (by liquidating some of their holdings or by laying off people who aren’t doing anything so that they can’t deploy that new capital elsewhere?). Many SOE jobs’ main utility here (from the government perspective) is to dispense wages, have people employed and keep employment numbers up. I don’t buy that the real power in China loves the current state of their SOEs.

I love all these "You are also right" comments. One of the skills I hear about being prized in Chinese culture is the ability hold two conflicting ideas in your head at once, without feeling stressed about it.

And that skill seems to help when trying to understand China itself!

No, Chinese do not have a culture to have conflicting ideas and not feeling stressed, not as anything I know from my 24 years of living and studying as a native Chinese.

If you are talking about "求同存异" that's for agreeing to have disagreement, which is a common cooperation culture around the globe.

If you are talking about "无为而治" from the Taoism philosophy of doing without actually forcing, that's not something relevant here though.

PS: I am often amused by people coming up with obviously-weird/nonsensical claims on Chinese, China or its culture, and the readers seemingly unable to apply common sense to disapprove them. This, to me, is an unconscious (or actually intentional) way of reinforce stereotype on China, which can be useful, for example, in mwny cases when someone in power wants to mobilize the common people, such stereotype really makes things easier to get approved.

Being able to manage what seems to be multiple "conflicting" ideas at once and without stress should be prized in every culture.

The world is not black or white. Enlarging your perspectives always help.

Conflicting ideas means believing that princess Diana was murdered by MI6 and that she was kidnapped by another shadowy party. Or that migrants will simultaneously take all the jobs and that they all just come to leech our welfare system dry.

On a macro level it is absolutely possible for immigration to both depress wages and overburden the welfare system.

Fox news and CNN would beg to differ

Where have you heard this about Chinese culture in particular? I’ve only heard of such a trait in reading Robert Altemeyer’s book The Authoritarians, where it is described as a common trait of right wing authoritarians, who appear to not be very good about comparing the various ideas they have together to see if they are contradictory. Altemeyer describes it as the result of an upbringing that emphasizes loyalty and submission and that posits that truth is something that comes from an authority figure, rather than something that can be derived from available facts for oneself. But I think that applying that critique to an entire country seems harsh, without evidence.

You should be interested in reality rather than projections. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, etc. are corporate entities separate from the Chinese government.

> Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, etc. are corporate entities separate from the Chinese government.

Not quite.

Since the default expectation is that public companies operate quite independently from the govt., it would be nice to reference some sources alleging with evidence close relationships between these companies and the Chinese govt.

Huawei: https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Huawei-affair-growing-Commun...

Alibaba: https://www.businessinsider.com/alibaba-jack-ma-outed-as-a-m...

Tencent: https://www.axios.com/china-big-tech-alibaba-tencent-communi...

Baidu: https://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/chinese-tech-giants-like...

You're clueless

I think Chinese government has to welcome slowing down because it's just impossible to maintain a growth rate like that indefinitely. The GPD of China already come close to that of US. At this scale, the same growth rate is naturally becoming harder and harder to achieve and simply pursuing that number might lead to catastrophic outcome. A slow down in economy growth gives China more time to fix the structural problems caused by rapid growth, and reduces the chances of a sudden crush. Overall I'd say it leads to a much more healthier economy.

It has side effects of course, but Chinese government have much better control of the macro-economy compared to free markets in most other countries, and that would help a lot in avoiding economical crisis. The debt issue is concerning, but I think Chinese government is much faster in acting on and fixing problems.

Some of the slow down mentioned in the article, such as the fall in housing market, seems to be exactly what the government want, as they've tighten the rules for real estate by a lot earlier this year. There're strict criteria people have to meet to be eligible for purchasing a house. This is a good thing because the current real estate market in China is almost insane.

If China did have "much better control of the macro-economy compared to free markets" the they wouldn't have the debt problem.

> The reasoning goes that when the growth slows, the entire pyramid goes crumbling down ( debts).

Since every bank in China is under the direction of the central government it's up to a committee therein to decide which companies end up bankrupt. China might look like it has a modern capital market but it's still centrally controlled for key parts. National banks can and will infinitely extend credit lines to unprofitable companies if it's in the governments interest (for example to prevent public unrest).

They have in practice been exporting huge sums of money overseas by buying companies all over the world.

And they have reduced this, government issued: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/aug/18/china-moves...

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