China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads
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[1] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3185326/c...
I don't want to talk about China, I want to talk about Russia.
Can Russia become the next technological powerhouse? Of course not.
Because the ceiling of Russian intelligence or wisdom is Putin. There is no one in Russia who can claim to be more intelligent than Putin. Russia can do without anyone, but not without Putin. Although we do not know whether Putin has any relevant qualifications or experience in the industry, all Russian businesses and professions depend on Putin's guidance and must hold up Putin's ideas and banners, otherwise they will not be able to move forward. Putin is the ceiling of Russia. How can a country with a ceiling become a technological powerhouse?
Look at the United States. Who dares to direct the work of Musk, whether Trump or Biden? Who dares to direct the business strategies of Apple and Google? I find that in the US, it seems that anyone can say they are smarter than the president, it seems that anyone can say they are smarter than the president. The technology companies in the US seem to be able to run smoothly without the guidance of Biden's ideas, and they seem to be able to develop technology without raising the banner of Biden's ideas, and they seem to be doing quite well. I find that the US is a country that has no ceiling in terms of intelligence or ingenuity, and that is always improving. Only such a country can become a technological powerhouse.
Remember to ORDER BY time DESC
https://www.zhihu.com/question/439676867/answer/2559528806
1. The United States has not been fascist until recently, but has been a fascist state since its founding. However, the US has not always been so fascist since its founding, and there was a period of relative normality during the Reagan years. In contrast, the fascisation of recent years has been particularly striking.
2. In terms of internal causes, the relative openness of the US was due to the fact that the McCarthy movement had gone too far and not only did the people become unhappy, but eventually the government became unhappy. So there was a temporary social consensus that fascisation had to be curbed. However, Trump himself was not a victim of the McCarthy movement and has been in good government since its end. He therefore did not personally resent it much. And in order to preserve the shining image of the Republican Party and to put an end to the leftist media of the Democratic Party engaging in the practice of Fake News. When Trump was in office, he directly disallowed statements that publicly denied the history of the Great Depression to the McCarthy movement. In this way, the new generation in the US also became predominantly favourable to the McCarthy movement, promoting the return of fascism to American society.
3. Externally, the US has been eager to strengthen its control over Canada, Mexico and Cuba, the 'backyard' of the US. This has not only caused resentment among the local population, but has also been widely criticised in international public opinion. If you talk about the Wilson Doctrine at this time, then the scandalous things you have done in the US are in themselves the opposite of what you want to do. The theory you preach turns out to be a slap in your own face, and you might as well not preach it at all. Instead, by picking up the ragged flag of fascism, you can explain the justification for these hegemonic acts of the US. And so its propaganda tone leans more and more towards fascism. This is the reality that needs to dictate the discourse.
This is so true. China has either directly invaded or has bad relations with every one of its neighbours. Even the communist ones. Even those seperated by sea. Only reason why this bullying is tolearted is because they are rich now
China nuking Russia is like Mexico trying to invade USA today. In sane national leaders' mind, that's a very unlike choice.
That's the thing, they were very far from sane. If you can murder millions of your own people then Nuking another country is not a farfetched scenario
> That's the thing, they were very far from sane
Considering China's situation since 1840:
* Colonizing by almost of the world's super power. It's like being abused by US China (todayas China) Russia France UK Germany etc. Think a moment how can a nation today fend off these powers and remain an integral nation. Yet, China managed to do that.
* During WW2, China faces Japan, China essentially is an agrarian society facing an advanced industrial nation Japan, with considerable resources and man power. China almost lost 1/3 of its territory. Yet the nation standed up, and emerged more coherent and unified than before WW2.
* The so-called insane CCP managed to install strong control over Tibet and Xinjiang, right after WW2, right under the threat of USSR. The ability to manipulate Stalin, is indeed insanely smart.
* CCP fought a series wars after WW2 never lost, and have all succeeded to achieve it's political objective. Indian border war made sure India as a nation lost its aggression towards China for half a century, Korea war installed a fear and awe by us military men towards Chinese army; the Vietnam war effectively ensure no single nation able to challenge China's long term superemcy in South East Asia.
* They are the only equal partner in the cold war containment over USSR, basically practiced the strategy by their own strategic initiative and offered proactive support across the globe for that strategy to work.
* They initiated opening up and internal reform, transformed 1B people from a USSR style economy into the second largest in USD number, and the largest in purchasing power. Where as the same reform effectively triggered the collapse of USSR, which had 1/4 of the population of China.
* They effectively are challenging US supremacy in all aspects and are winning in many. Basically unimaginable since 1920s.
Call me stupid, but I think they are not only sane, they are probably so sane that random people like you are not able to grasp their genius...
> the Vietnam war effectively ensure no single nation able to challenge China's long term superemacy
I hope you realize that China flat out lose this one?
> They are the only equal partner in the cold war containment over USSR
This is not true and embarrassingly so. That's like Mazepa declaring himself the only equal partner of Charles XII (google it up). Triple embarrassing for chinese communist party. Probably fourthly embarassing in the context of USA "containing" China right now.
Not sure what you mean. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War This is what referred in my comment. I cannot see how China lost it? Mind elaborate a bit?
Quotes from Wikipedia:
Although Vietnam continued to occupy Cambodia, China successfully mobilized international opposition to the occupation, rallying such leaders as Cambodia's deposed king Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodian anticommunist leader Son Sann, and high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge to deny the pro-Vietnamese Cambodian People's Party in Cambodia
China caused Vietnam to suffer from serious economic and military hardship by threatening to launch a second invasion, and by supporting Pol Pot guerrillas in Cambodia.
Although unable to deter Vietnam from ousting Pol Pot from Cambodia, China demonstrated that its Cold War communist adversary, the Soviet Union, was unable to protect its Vietnamese ally.[19]
"We've botched actual fighting but said we got what we wanted thanks to Pol Pot guerillas" is one of the most pathetic things I've ever read.
Also, I think that to the rest of the world outside China, Vietnam has demonstrated that it can hold on its own with some help from its USSR ally.
I am talking about China's geopolitical objectives. As for Pol Pot's sadistic crazy butchering, that's a separate topic.
If you want to discuss the moral objectives of China's wars, we can have another thread. I definitely have a lot to say as well.
I'm really weak in that kind of history so I may get everything off, but that's what it looks from the outside.
My conclusion still stands, China achieved its political goal: Vietnam got contained into its limited sphere of influence.
But Mongolia, sitting between two authoritarian powers, is nowadays a stable democracy with regular transfers of power between opposing parties.
I wonder if this can last. Their best chance is actually the fact that they aren't very prominent on the international stage and probably not worth a conquest or hostile takeover right now.
I still prefer the Russia and Putin on though since it’s more specific to Xi.
This is a quite uninformed perception on both xi and Trump. This is so ridiculous that it can only mean that it's made by someone who is ignorant of both Chinese and US pilitics.
* oil+gas are not complicated
* metallurgy is somewhat complicated
* a drilling machine has a very complicated dependency
Like, duhhhh, oil+gas is fiendishly complicated (drilling, transport, refining, organisational), with extremely complicated (and often single-source) dependencies; certainly more complicated than the CNC-machine-needed-to-make-a-mining-machine small business example. “Metallurgy” is complicated with complicated dependencies too (although plenty of Russian expertise available). Both of those are massive industries with very deep complexity.
The story also has a strong “geek inherit the earth” narrative - which always scores well with engineers here on HN.
The “mafia” metaphor didn’t work for me either.
It does make me wonder who the author(s) want to influence and why?
But still, I liked the links, I liked the story, and they wrote well (I am guessing English wasn’t their first language?).
Not rocket science (though Russia also does it), but not your average mafia-driven business either.
This effectively restricts the talent pool - those who are smart are likely able to see thru any propaganda. And those that are smart are also more capable of emigrating overseas where you make more money anyway.
So it's not about stifling, but more about slowness. But with a large enough population, even a smaller % of talent is still a huge number.
This is rarely true. People can be, and often are, extremely smart in one field and idiots in others. The fact that they think otherwise is often part of the problem. Especially since propaganda is often layered - everyone knows something is propaganda, but that doesn't help you understand the truth, and there is often subtler propaganda that guides those who see the blatant propaganda to the "right truth".
Brilliant scientists can be apolitical and so isolated from the rest of the society that they don't even realize what's going on. Notably, the Soviet Union produced a lot of excellent results in mathematics and physics.
But when it comes to designing and selling actual products based on the theoretical discoveries, the inefficiency, stupidity and mendacity inherent in the authoritarian systems really comes to the fore and can't be dodged.
Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies (at least for a CEO), so are most other American tech CEOs. As was pointed out, you can't siphon away tech like you can do with oil and other commodities without making things stop working.
Also, huge corporations are themselves extremely centrally planned, and that is where much of their strengths lie. There's a reason why Apple was able to capitalize on the smartphone, and it wasn't some market of suppliers.
The problem with centralized planning is that it tends to ignore many local concerns, often with disastrous consequences, especially when leaders start to ignore any feedback from below in their central planning. This has caused the downfall of innumerable companies in various markets, but there is usually another company to take their place. When used by countries, it causes famines and other avoidable disasters, as happened in much of the USSR and China, especially under Mao's monstrous regime.
But when done right, as it was in China after the 90s and before the Pooh, it has also caused the single biggest reduction in poverty in world history, measured by number of people.
Of course they are, having built upon stolen EU and US tech and having trained their people in the West. But they learn fast and incrementally improve those designs. The difference is the Russians had their very own designs. Even in electronics, their concepts are fundamentally different from western concepts.
> having built upon stolen EU and US tech and trained their people in the West. But they learn fast and incrementally improved those designs.
(I would wish for much shorter copyrights, too, or at least for the need to register and pay them after X years.)
In the era there is no royalty system at all. The moment royalty was introduced, it was unfair, unequal, already with a clear economy and political agenda.
> But when done right, as it was in China after the 90s and before the Pooh, it has also caused the single biggest reduction in poverty in world history, measured by number of people.
This was largely China moving away from a planned economy and toward a more market oriented economy. Also, you have to take care about how you measure “largest reduction in poverty” here as well because poverty was declining all over the world at the same time, largely driven by advancements from the capitalist west and globalization. I’m sure economic planning can be credited with something, but the key element was “allowing western money to pour into the country” which looks a lot more like capitalism than central planning to my eyes.
Possibly, though they still retained much more control than the capitalist economies they outgrew.
> Also, you have to take care about how you measure “largest reduction in poverty” here as well because poverty was declining all over the world at the same time, largely driven by advancements from the capitalist west and globalization.
That is not true. The rest of the world outside China has remained at the same or worse poverty levels, largely.
> I’m sure economic planning can be credited with something, but the key element was “allowing western money to pour into the country” which looks a lot more like capitalism than central planning to my eyes.
If China had played by free market rules, Huawei, Alibaba and Xiaomi would not be competing with Samsung, Apple or Amazon right now. A large part of China's advantage came from the state using its negotiating power to force foreign companies to trade their IP for cheap manufacturing, thus propelling China's intellectual elite back from the dark age that it had been plunged into. Individual Chinese companies probably lost profits for a long time because of this, and much more US, Japanese or European money would have pourn in if they didn't enforce this policy; but, they would be much poorer today.
Edit: note that China is and has always been a capitalist country. They were centrally planned state capitalists, and have moved somewhat in the direction of free market capitalism. But there has never been a period in China's history when production or wealth were democratically controlled.
This largely is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Specifically, many countries in southeast Asia, geographically close to China but using different societal models, have grown much, much richer since 1950.
South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia have nowadays much higher living standards than they used to have.
> when leaders start to ignore any feedback from below in their central planning. This has caused the downfall of innumerable companies in various markets
basically you cant dictate things from afar but must empower those on the ground (genba) because only they see the actual things (genbutsu) going on and the actual results (genjitsu) of policies...
Imo as you've mentioned if a leader like Xi, a Mao regressionist, didn’t take power and instead someone like Jiang Zemin took it, China would have likely passed the US in innovation by now.
Like with his white paper for the Hyperloop which was fundamentally wrong and couldn't have worked? Or with his idea of putting Hyperloop segments on.... Wheels? Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability? Or to cite current examples: full self driving that doesn't actively kill drivers when...? And while I'd love to have one, his idea for that household robot is straight out impossible with current technology.
If anything, musk is an example of the parent, as all of his companies improved after they got over his original technical ideas.
I don't understand why people keep wanting to put celebrities on high pedestals with completely unrealistic expectations. He's a successful businessman and extremely talented influencer, he has enough achievements to his name without randomly adding more to it.
Outside his own domains of expertise he certainly comes across that way, but he does also say "yeah I reckon there's only like a 60% chance of our latest rocket not exploding".
Whether that actually happened or not isn't that important but the fact that people thought it was a good thing always struck me as odd. It's really bad if the boss of a multinational company focuses on such minute details and hints at major management failures.
All signs point to him being a very talented businessman and organizer who manages to get a lot of people producing innovative and popular products. It seems like people underestimate just how much of a challenge that is and feel the need to "give" him some more tangible skills.
He has good understanding of the broad strokes of their technology and carries the vision forward but an Engineer-CEO he isn't and shouldn't be.
Musk has a lot of negatives and comes off as arrogant sometimes, but I never heard a story about him forcing the SpaceX engineers to keep some design flaw there because it was his precious idea and thus can't be wrong.
IDK about Tesla, I am not that interested in cars.
Munro Assoc's teardowns and analysis suggest that Tesla both innovates and increments at an astonishing clip. Tesla makes plenty of mistakes, for sure. Often existential. Like attempting fully automated manufacturing. But somehow they manage to pivot.
One notable exception, that I'm aware of, is Telsa's full self driving car effort, especially without LIDAR. That one baffles me. So stubborn. While it might have been about cost at some point, expense and risk hasn't deterred Tesla's other audacious moon shots. Like investing in the gigapress to make huge castings. Total game changer.
Tesla's AI team was recently sacked. I'd love to know the inside baseball. Does it signal a change in strategy? Were they pushing back too hard, like maybe insisting on adopting LIDAR? Maybe Musk just wanted a fresh team for fresh start?
I think the reason would be very revealing.
--
Like you, I also have little interest in cars. But I'm junkie for all the process, improvement, Peter Drucker, Edward Deming type stuff. And right now that means trying to figure out what TMSC, Apple, Haier, Tesla, and SpaceX are doing.
I don't care if Musk is a genius, poseur, whatever. If I did care, regardless of his past actions, I'd worry about his escalating self-destructive behavior sabotaging Tesla and SpaceX going forward.
Musk very obviously has to live right on the edge of chaos, always has to double down.
Musk's compulsion sorta reminds me of cyclist Graeme Obree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree The way I heard it; part of Obree's internal drive, beyond all ration limits, was he truly believed he'd die if he didn't succeed. Literally racing for his life.
From a very far away, I wonder if Musk's mania is like Obree's in some ways.
What do you dislike about this particular idea? It is not inherently wrong, it is "only" very technically challenging.
What SpaceX did was not a pivot, rather introduction of an intermediate step because full reusability proved too hard at that point. But they never gave up on the ultimate goal of full reusability and the Starship rocket that is now under development is intended to be fully reusable.
It will always be more effective to recreate relevant parts instead of full disassembly, in-depth quality assurance and then reassembly
These predictions do not tend to age well. I am not an aerospace engineer, but Starship seems to be fairly hopeful.
Already Falcon 9 shows that you do not need to fully disassemble engines etc. to be sure that they are OK. A static fire with enough sensors will do, and nowadays they don't even do that.
If you look at the table of booster reuses of Falcon 9, failures happen, but they are infrequent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...
Still, their industry seems to grow fine including high tech. I think what's happening is that they split politics very strictly from business.
Technically, the world has changed a lot in the meantime; there wasn't even a public radio service in Tsarist time, and now we have the Internet. But the problem of censorship and various ways to circumvent it seems to be the same as before.
It's not the same game at all between us and the americans. The americans arent trying to play 5D chess on a falling giant towers firefighting one problem while creating 10 others. Americans and the rest of the world quite frankly, tolerate suboptimization while we believe, or rather the communists pretend they believe, that we can reach an optimum: no crime, everyone agreeing, everyone patriotic, win every competition of any sort, sky always blue, world always rotating around us. So we control, every angle of every mirror. If it was a choice, like in my home country, France, to go another way than the americans, it'd be fine-ish, but no one here can claim that, so we cant own our mistakes, nor our successes.
I like his idea of a ceiling, an accurate way to describe the constant sycophance we have to deploy to do what we want despite it being maybe out of the box we were expected to stay in until the great leader discovers another larger box was surrounding it. Wont stop us trying to force its boundaries though, and it s a fallacy to think the common Chinese doesnt astutely perceive and navigate this to his best interest, less vocally than americans maybe.
> Nomura said the refusal to pay mortgages stems from the widespread practice in China of selling homes before they’re built. Funds from presales are kept in escrow accounts to use for construction. But confidence that projects will be completed has weakened as developers’ cash woes intensified.
> “Inappropriate usage of presale proceeds and the lack of adequate supervision of escrow accounts by local regulators and banks are likely associated with these mortgage suspension cases,” Zerlina Zeng, a senior analyst at CreditSights, wrote in a note.
1. Local govts are in heavy debt and sell land to pay back their debt.
2. Real estate corps pay a hell lot of money (don't care where they get them) to purchase a land ownership (for 70 years max) from the govt.
3. Before construction even begins, the real estate corps start selling the houses to citizens.
4. Citizens pay up to 40% of the total price on their own, and ask the bank to lend them the rest of the 60% and get it paid back in the NEXT 30 YEARS (often paying as much as twice as the original price).
5. The bank gives 60% directly to the real estate corp. So in fact the citizen IS OWING MONEY TO THE BANK, and not to the estate corp.
6. Often, the real estate corp uses this money to pay back previous loans, or use this money to purchase more land from the local govt. So current (future) constructions pretty much depends on whether this Ponzi scheme could continue.
7. With the money earned from selling the land, the local govt could pay back the loan and ask for more, in order to build more infrastructure so as to pull up estate prices, from which it can earn more by selling more land.
8. ...until no typical citizen will be able to afford it.
Why emphasize that? 30 year mortgages are common in the US. At current rates of 5.5%, the total paid in interest will be bigger than the original loan.
Of course, most US mortgages are taken out on housing units that actually exist.
Edit: CN definition: (household leverage ratio) = (mortgages paid in 22Q1) / (total disposable income in 22Q1)
In the UK at least, a buyer can borrow up to 95% of the home's value and I think 4 or 4.5x the borrower's annual income.
The mechanics of this are a bit scary, I wonder how much real data there is on it.
Paradoxically, if it were the US, it would be so bad it may wipe out the nation.
But Xi has the Central Banks politicized fully ... he can make currency worth whatever he wants. He has to reallocate/rebalance without causing a revolution.
And if it does get bad, they may try to start a war as a distraction. That sounds extremely cynical but it's a real thing that happens.
Of course people tend to pay mortgage early to avoid paying many times over at 10%.
But, having small montly payment helps in case you have some temporary financial emergency.
In Canada mortgages are typically 25 or 30 year amortization periods, but you can only fix the rate for 10 years (usually less as you get a much lower rate).
After the 5 years you renew your mortgage at the current interest rate with the same bank, or try and refinance entirely which requires the same paperwork as a new mortgage.
The US and I believe Netherlands are the rare countries where you can get fixed rate for the entire 30 year amortization period.
- there was a postwar housing shortage, so the housing quality that came up to meet that demand quickly was not good. even if the house is still maintained well (a later point), japan has seen meteoric rises with living standards over the past 100 years, so it probably isn't compatible with modern wants and needs
- Japanese earthquake codes were regularly revised until 1981 after lessons learned from disasters. buildings from before that time have a significantly higher rate of collapse during earthquakes, so buying one and keeping it is a bit of a gamble on your life
- because of the depreciation, there isn't a lot of incentive to maintain your house well to the point where it can last more than 30 years
of course, all these things might be less true now that Japan has stagnated since the '90s, so there are reports of more people accepting renovating a house they buy rather than tearing down.
- construction is really big business in Japan, and as a result has deep ties to politics and is a usual beneficiary of Japanese stimulus programs (of which there have been many, since Japan has tried and failed at spending its way out of deflation)
- NIMBYism on buildings is much lower than in the US or Europe, due to the expectation that they are temporary
- because of the lack of NIMBYism, Japanese architects get a lot of leeway to build cutting edge projects, and so are very well represented in the world of star-chitecture
In the USA, the usual mortgage has a fixed interest rate for the term of the mortgage. In New Zealand the interest rate is approximately a floating (edit:variable) rate over the 30 year period.
In NZ the mortgage interest rate (which controls your repayments) can be fixed for up to 5 years (the median is 2) but after the “fixed” period the interest rate resets to the current interest rates (edit: typically mortgagees lock in a new 2 year “fixed” rate at the current 2 year interest rate). NZ rates were around 2% to 3% since 2008 [1], but now they are closer to 6% [2] and most mortgage holders in New Zealand will have to pay twice as much for the interest component of their mortgage repayment, putting some people under financial stress (an acquaintance is being forced to sell an investment property because they were over-leveraged). The mortgage interest rate over the 30 year term is more of a stepwise approximation to the floating interest rate: I am unsure how much control the mortgage holder has over varying the principal repayments (I think I can pay 20% more principal per payment, shortening 30 year term to 24 years).
It is more complicated than that, and the USA has a wide variety of mortgage products you can buy including ones similar to NZ (not just the usual USA fixed rate 30 year). Other countries have their own quirks, so I am only speaking for NZ where I understand the details better.
No need for confusing naming. You're talking about fixed rate, variable rate and short period fixed rate mortgages.
For example, in Australia and NZ a “fixed rate”[1] mortgage is not the same as what you have called a “fixed rate” mortgage. Australia looks like it offers up to 10 years at a fixed rate on a 30 year mortgage (ANZ? some banks like Westpac only offer 5 years?). Banks in NZ offer up to 5 years, even though they are mostly Ozzie banks. Ozzie banks typically offer something called offset mortgages - that word doesn’t get used in NZ at all AFAIK (instead NZers can apply for a seperate revolving mortgage, I haven’t seen it bundled like in Oz).
What you call “variable rate” is called “floating rate” in New Zealand (and search completion hinted maybe the same for Canada & Singapore).
It is confusing.
[1] https://www.loans.com.au/home-loans/everything-you-need-to-k...
And it's typically called an "adjustable rate" in the states.
Weird!
Construction is usually financed by a construction loan, at a higher rate than a mortgage, and the builder is the borrower. But not always. Here are some US failures from the 2008 housing crash.[1]
China has an unusual problem - the Party really, really doesn't like elections. For anything. But China has buyable apartments, which work like condominiums. Some organization has to run the building and maintain the common areas. That led to the creation of homeowners' associations with elected officials. This got party officials upset, and now efforts are being made to make HOAs subordinate to the local Communist Party units.[2]
[1] https://www.mortgagefit.com/construction/loan-default.html
Most countries do not have this.
To add to that, taking a mortgage for a house that doesn't already exist is a very used practice outside of China, too, I know over here in Romania lots of people do it.
It's called credit for "casa la rosu", basically all you need to show to the bank is a contract between you and the developer and a "registration" thingie for the house in question with the local city-hall (again, even if the house doesn't already exist, in practice). It comes with a price discount (I haven't kept up, I think it's in the 20-30% range, maybe bigger) but, of course, it's all very risky (or at least that's my opinion). That hasn't stopped lots and lots of people from taking those type of mortgages.
The difference is that the developer must be reputable and the price is actually paid in several tranches, as the construction passes defined milestones. The bank will require independent assessments of the state of construction before approving any partial payment.
But yeah, it is still risky. You need to contribute at least 20 per cent of your own funds as a downpayment, and the downpayment is paid first. I wouldn't dare do that with an unknown developer. I risked it with a corporation that has been in operation since 1998 and has a lot of references.
This really opened my eyes as to how much mitigation costs have risen over the years. I had built a house in the same area in 1989 and the initial costs were one tenth of that.
Was Shocked at connection cost for everything
My grandfather became a pharmacist by simply apprenticing to one and then later owning a pharmacy. My mom had to only do a 3-year course, today it would be lot more difficult than that.
You can call it red-tap or code, we have learnt a lot over the last centuries, we put these regulations to protect the average consumer. Sometimes it is overkill, but most regulations have been payed for in blood. Aviation is very visible example.
I think OP's main point is that the majority of the regulated process is not necessary for his project. I would guess OP went through the whole process, and felt that the checks and examinations probably did not do much good to himself or the future home buyers. Thus the outrageous cost becomes an issue, because with the cost, the value is not justifiable.
As for pharmacist, I would totally agree that modern medicine is exponentially more complex than 30 years ago, and that's in a good way: the mechanism of how the medicine works are more advanced, variety increases exponentially, cost is down and more people are using more medicines.
Comparably, building a house has not been much different than what's in 1970s. Aside from newer materials in components, the house building is largely equivalent to what's in 1970s. I got this impression from my own house that is built in 1972, and watching the new building materials been used now on YouTube.
Many builders will therefor "self-finance" and sell the customer a "built home" direct into a normal mortgage.
Considering that commercial housing started in PRC in the 1980s and the first batch of houses aren't technically expired yet, I think it's pretty hard to say what exactly will happen.
Come the 70 yr renewal, if there are citizenry who are attempting to disrupt the power structure of the CCP, they will be the first to lose their lease (or some other method such as a high tax which is equivalent to losing the lease).
Mark my words. Regulation that is not fully well specified, and enforced universally, is basically just a political weapon.
Also, there is no evidence that the disappeared money goes into real-estate/local govt, though it is plausible.
Real estate is one of the few assets that is quite secure when it comes to ownership.
Other Asian countries are similar. It’s why your average house in Saigon is more expensive than San Francisco despite a per capita GDP that is < 1/10th that of California.
What is the source of the debt, is it bonds, do they just run a deficit, something else?
paying gov't workers (as well as any outstanding debt from previously), services and such.
from what i heard, the local gov't is only paid some 40% of their required budget from the central gov't, and they have to make up the short-fall themselves.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220531-why-chinas-popul...
It's pretty similar to Korea until the step 3 but we have some safeguards after that.
Instead of giving money directly to the development corp, we give it to a trust corp. And the dev corps can only use the money to build the building.
And if the dev can not meet the due date and if it is delayed more than 3 months, the contract can be cancelled and the owners can get the money back.
That very rarely happens because dev corps desperately meet the deadline regardless of the quality. That causes hell lot of another issues but that's totally different story.
It seems to me like there are many things missing in the Chinese real estate system. Or is it just because no one cares the regulations?
Why are you capitalizing owing money to the bank. That’s how mortgages work pretty much everywhere
So they're less leveraged than most American home purchases of 5~20% down payment. 30-year mortgages are also standard in the U.S. You emphasized "NEXT 30 YEARS". Do you think it should be longer or shorter?
>5. The bank gives 60% directly to the real estate corp. So in fact the citizen IS OWING MONEY TO THE BANK, and not to the estate corp.
That's how mortgages work. Why else would a bank be involved if the money is still owed to the seller? Do you think mortgages shouldn't be a thing, that people should save up 100% of the money then pay in full when purchasing a home?
>6. Often, the real estate corp uses this money to pay back previous loans, or use this money to purchase more land from the local govt. So current (future) constructions pretty much depends on whether this Ponzi scheme could continue.
You keep describing how this works in most places as if it's something outrageous.
>8. ...until no typical citizen will be able to afford it.
We're way ahead of China getting to this point here.
the american home is already built (mostly), for such a down-payment. The bank takes the home as collateral.
If it was an off-the-plan purchase (which is what the OP described), you don't really pay the full amount, but just a deposit (like 10-20%). The risk of the development falls solely onto the developers, not the buyer - the deposit is held in escrow, not used for funds to pay for construction or other developer activities.
> You keep describing how this works in most places as if it's something outrageous
that's because it is, when you compare it to western developments. The risk in real estate development in china lies solely on the buyer, and it's absolutely not the case in the west.
The practice of advancing money before construction completes, reduces the price for the buyer as already built properties sell for much higher than buying early. So buying early is way to buy a house when the prices are already out of reach for most. It can work if the project and financing is well regulated by the banks.
The property is cheaper[2] because these risks of delays, developer not finishing, not getting approvals so on exist and in theory is factored into the price, along with hedging future inevitable price increases.
[1] Indian real estate is by no means healthy and has its fair share of problems with these practices and delays, but not close to China's scale.
[2] In theory the risk is exactly matched by discounted price, but in practice seller will usually price it a bit higher than the value warranted by the risk factors. Also on average while it may work out, individual buyers may loose life savings as they are betting the farm literally when any specific purchase goes sour.
Evergrande and a few other developers have gone bust and left these pre-sold apartments unfinished. So now the people who bought real estate of any kind are getting spooked, and this is basically a bank run, but on real estate.
The Great Recession was bad, but all those houses existed. Which seems a bit better than this present failure scenario.
---
As far as affordability, price to income ratio in Shenzhen is 36:1, as opposed to the highest house price to income ratio in the US being LA at 13:1. China is in an unaffordability class of its own.
But isn't that really the case in most countries these days (or at least those countries where a home-buying culture is prevalent).
For example, a quick internet search for the UK suggests 40% ± 5% is the going rate for off-plan purchases.
The problem emerges when the majority of your homes are sold before they are built, therefore if any defaults emerge, there is nothing to collect on. The practice isn't the problem, it's the sheer scale of the practice that's the problem.
Literally how every condo project in Asia is sold. Not sure how it is like in Europe.
Waiting until the construction is finished usually means many units are sold (the good ones).
It also depends on the builder’s reputation of course, if it’s a big name they can charge more in advance.
IMO it sucks a bit for the buyer as delays are quite often and hard to attack in court. It also attracts speculators who sign the pre-contract just to sell for a profit when the units are delivered.
* Giving out loans on properties that have yet to be built. In the event of default there is no underlying asset that the bank can use to recoup their investment.
* Improper controls on escrow. If you're handing out a loan for a property that has yet to be built, why would you not control escrow to make sure the money was spent appropriately.
My impression is that it seems everyone is just trying to make a quick buck over there, everyone is secretly jockeying to be a little bit better off themselves. But what happens when literally everyone in an industry is jockeying, eventually things will go off the rails.
* Chinese GDP shrinks to 0.4% in Q2 2022. Which is still suspicious because Shanghai economic activities declined -40%, and real estate overall activities dropped -30%
* Massive mortgage boycott. Also public protests against lost deposits and unable to access bank is being aired out in Chinese social media. Also property bond crash spreading
* The 1 billion people data leak has some experts analyzing the data and figuring that the Chinese population is already in decline, and only at 1.2B currently. Which means the population is going to half its size sooner than 2100
* Chinese firms are still selling Russia good its military needs https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-firms-are-selling-russi..., incurring the wraths of normal folks in Europe and other allied countries.
* Zero covid practice still going on, with tons of public discontent. There are videos of the people waiting in line to test in the pouring rain and huge wind!
* Zeihan gaining more popularity, which implies that people do believe that China is crashing. Foreign investors and companies are pulling out in record numbers
* public sector employees taking 30% salary cuts
Makes me think there will be a massive public unrest and Chinese government will likely collapse soon. What do people think?
they will not because the reason japan (and the US) lost theirs is that china was cheap.
Where are you going to get this type of labour - skilled but cheap - other than china, in the next 10-30 years? Southeastern asian countries could make up some of the amount, but if they could do it today, they would've dominated already!
The repatriation of manufacturing is political propaganda - it won't work economically, as consumers' preferences is overwhelmingly for cheap goods, not expensive patriotism.
Another scenario: Automation makes labor costs less relevant.
Anyway, it's happening already. Tons of news articles covering it lately. For instance: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/us-factory-boom-heats-up-as-ceos...
> but if they could do it today, they would've dominated already
Weird logic. I don't follow.
There's no indication that the manufacturing capacity could be taken over by a south-eastern asian country. If they could do so, why is it not done today, rather than in the future (when china loses their manufacturing capacity)?
I don’t think companies are going to fully leave the Chinese market or anything. That wouldn’t make any sense. But divest their exposure and locate factories all around the world because of the risk due to concentration? Yea definitely.
So the world will only move out of China if other countries like India can offer significantly lower cost at same quality, which they haven't been able to do, or if there are significant geopolitical risks to staying, which seems likelier by the day.
I will believe it when I see it.
The RE bubble is bad but substantially less bad than what the US was facing in 2008. There is a big difference between over-leveraged developers (the Chinese problem) and rotten Main street banks (which was the US problem).
In China's case we are likely going to see a continued drop in housing prices for a little bit longer until they plateau. However they are unlikely to see growth again for a long time unless Chinese government changes tact. This isn't a bad thing as right now Chinese homes are some of the most unaffordable on the planet, especially in desirable cities. Also it will lead to speculation and investment moving outside of RE and into other vehicles like equities which will improve the breadth and quality of Chinese financial markets. The other bad things that will happen is construction companies will likely be in distress, large infrastructure projects/spending directed by the CCP will save the good ones but there will be a bunch of consolidation and downsizing. Not a particularly bad thing given the changing population dynamics probably requiring the construction of less housing than previously. Impact is unlikely to spread beyond RE because of how compartmentalized funding is in China. The government controls all the major banks and as a result they run under very low-risk capital regimes. It's much more likely the big financial fallout will be from foreign investors that were greedily holding onto risky Chinese commercial paper.
All-in-all I actually suspect this to go out with a whimper rather than a bang. The way systems are setup in China there just isn't really the potential for a bang outside of like big social issues causing a revolution or something but generally speaking that doesn't happen. Usually as dissent grows they recognize it won't go away and start doing something to appease the people. Recent example being their effort to deal with pollution in the major cities, etc.
So yeah. I get that Western folks, Americans in particular don't understand the Chinese system and wish ill will upon it but the reality is that it's a lot more robust than said folks give it credit so don't bet on it failing anytime soon.
The main issue with 2008 wasn't the housing bubble itself, such bubbles are normal and happen all the time. The issue was the extent of the financial over-leveraging (due to deregulation) by the financial firms which threatened the solvency of Main st and Wall st banks alike and the incentives that came out of the synthetic financial products that were engineered over baskets of mortgages. Namely a reduction in qualification for sub-prime loans and increased incentives to offer variable rate mortgages with cliff clauses + continual refinancing + speculation + flipping etc.
Essentially normal people losing their house == expected (though sad still) and would have caused a moderate recession (again, expected). However because of how overleveraged the banks themselves were they collapsed, this spread (contagion) to pension funds, equities, everywhere essentially and because these assets and positions in the funds and banks were held across the world it resulted in the -global- financial crisis rather than a contained RE bubble popping.
The US was able to 'rebalance' by propping up some banks - but in reality they saved 'consumers' by taking toxic loan assets of banks balance sheet and absorbing it onto the fed balance sheet.
CCP can't really do that for houses that are not built.
The other issue is the size of that part of the economy in relative terms.
This is is not going to 'blow over' - everything, including Xi's totalitarian takeover, increased control and repression, issue of age, diminishing marginal returns to growth ...
... this adds up to a 'major shift' in what China is. We saw a different China in the 1990s (quietly building), 2000's (onto the world stage), 2010 trying to be a global superpower, threatening Taiwan, occupying S. China Sea etc, and now 2020's 'reckoning /rebalancing'.
This is not what happened. (The Fed never bought the toxic assets. It bought Treasuries and super-safe nontraditional assets off owners of toxic assets so they had the liquidity to resolve themselves. But the toxic stuff ended up in other places.)
Look at the giant bump in 2008 in Fed assets. Most of that is mortgages.
And then in 2019 an even bigger calamity.
Those massive jumps represent the finantialization of the USA, a massive form of economic shift.
[1] https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/fed-data-shows-a-half...
There are zero mortgages on the Fed’s balance sheet. There has never been a mortgage on its balance sheet. If you think the Fed bought whole mortgages off banks for keepsies, or lost a single cent on its bailouts, you’ve missed something.
“Mortgage-backed obligations held by Federal Reserve Banks…guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Ginnie Mae” [1]. Not mortgages. It’s a subtle difference. But a big one, given the top tranches of mortgage-backed securities never faced a solvency (versus a liquidity) problem.
Fed means Federal Reserve. Not the federal government. The Fed and federal government are meaningfully different.
It acts in essentially the same manner as 'Bank of England' or the 'ECB' just structured a bit differently.
The Fed's massive intervention in 2008 was similar to other Central Banks, because it's effectively the same thing i.e. 'governance'.
The Fed's intervention to 'buy mortgages' is not a 'market response' - it's a 'government response'.
The intervention was mostly related to buying mortgages (however they ares structured is secondary) and is de-facto a bailout of Home Owners, who, if they were subject to normal market conditions, would have faced massive foreclosures, and, would have destroyed home prices for everyone else, furthering the calamity.
That the mortgages on the Fed's Balance sheet were not 'the worst' of the assets is a bit of a side show - in 'current market terms' they were all toxic we know that because nobody wanted to buy them, which is why the Fed had to do a 'non market intervention'.
If they were not basically 'garbage' at the time, the Fed would not have had to intervene to buy them.
As a result, the Fed hold's a giant pile of 'mortgages'.
In the way Sudafed is meth. Agency MBS’s never faced solvency questions. Unrated mortgage-backed securities and whole mortgages did. You are argued the Fed bought toxic crap off banks. It didn’t. It bought the cream of the crop, giving banks liquidity with which to address the rest.
The difference between mortgages and agency MBSs is entry-level finance. You don’t need to know it. But you should understand your circles of competence well enough to know not to debate it.
The most likely way this plays out is CCP slowly nationalizes Evergrande and other embattled developers (bond holders and equity investors 100% screwed), sell the unfinished projects to developers that didn't run themselves into the ground for them to be completed. This is already happening.
As much as people want to believe there will be collapse I just see it as incredibly unlikely given both track record and the iron grip that CCP has over the Chinese state banks. Without a failure in the banking sector I just don't see significant enough contagion to cause long-term damage.
Assuming there was political will, there's no reason the CCP couldn't do that for houses not yet built. By definition toxic debt is larger than whatever the collateral is.
Shadow banking and privatized loans are definitely a risk but they don't represent the same scale of risk as we saw in 2008. It's almost certain they explode but I don't think it's possible that such a small portion of the market can markedly affect the financial stability of the nation as a whole.
Aren’t those the banks that were taken over by gangs and has their funds embezzled? You’re painting way too rosy a picture of the Chinese financial system. It’s taken months to make rural depositors while after having their money stolen. They’re still waiting.
Because of their horrendous credit ratings developers actually had a huge amount of trouble sourcing capital locally and were forced to sell junk bonds on the international market at elevated yields. This means a few things, firstly that everyone acknowledged the risks (hence the high yield) but also that the impact of the RE market slowdown is devastating on these over-leveraged developers because of their very high cost of debt.
The fact that the assets were always junk rated is partially why this is way less of a big problem than people are trying to make it out to be. In 2008 the problem was the assets were AAA rated (the exact opposite of junk) and thus were held in enormous quantities by large banks and funds all around the world. Conversely because of the risk these assets posed they are held rather narrowly in comparison and those that do hold them knew and were sophisticated enough to accept the risks.
US (and Western Europe) loans backed by residential real estate were considered "safe" by the world. Loans in China that outside parties need to work backchannels to be allowed to get into will never be considered that safe.
bad policies such as zero covid, tech crackdown, or not resolving the root of real estate crisis -> investor (domestic and foreign) loss of confidence -> companies leaving or shut down -> rising unemployment or reduced salary -> debt bubble gets bigger -> bad policies.
This death spiral is enhanced by demographics collapse which is happening now, not 30 or 15 or 10 years ago, as well as nationalistic behaviors that isolates China. Not to mention global inflation and consumer demand collapse.
In my list of things I also didn't mention
* 20% unemployment rate for new grads
* layoffs from big tech companies
* 70% of China's economy is real estate related, which means China will take an even bigger impact from real estate collapse than other countries that have less % of economy in real estate.
* collapse in demand for real estate due to fast aging population
* 20% of built real estate stays empty (not even rented) due to investment vehicles purpose
We have our own issues here in Europe with incurring wrath on Russia, thank you, we can't take two at a time. Or at least I hope we won't f.ing take two at a time, the gas prices being what they are is bad enough.
GDP growth
> Massive mortgage boycott.
Probably won't be as bad as 2008.
> The 1 billion people data leak has some experts analyzing the data ...
Link please?
> Chinese firms are still selling Russia good its military needs
What do you expect? China does not sanction Russia. And USA is hard pushing China in all China's surrounding areas: Taiwan, South China Sea, Xinjiang, South East Asian... Punching a cow and you'll be paled.
> incurring the wraiths of normal folks in Europe and other allied countries.
"Wraiths"? Can we first see the wraith be unleashed onto the Russian troops in Ukraine, which supposes to incur even more "wraiths"...
> Zero covid practice still going on, with tons of public discontent. There are videos of the people waiting in line to test in the pouring rain and huge wind!
You can measure how anger the US public is towards their covid policy, vs Chinese public's reaction. ANY public policy is going to err some people, especially in a country with close to 5 times the population of USA.
> * Zeihan gaining more popularity, which implies that people do believe that China is crashing. Foreign investors and companies are pulling out in record numbers
Who/what is Zeihan?
> * public sector employees taking 30% salary cuts
Err... Link please...
> Link please?
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hacker-claims-have-stole...
But then the person tweeting this has been making the same argument since 2014. So the recent leak could have just been confirmation bias for him.
Microsoft has no issue with getting rid of politically problematic repos.
https://www.technadu.com/github-removes-protest-organizing-a... - when Microsoft won't respect the right to protest in Spain, they won't give two figs about that same right in China.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/8xe... - for another example, this time in the US.
There's a difference between protest and sedition, and the Catalan independence movement went full in on treason.
The second is doxxy, so it is understandable to an extent.
There's a few hundred million mainlanders, and the entire leadership of the CCP who feel the same way about Hong Kong. Perhaps Madrid and Beijing should compare notes?
Catalonia does not have a legal right to just break free from Spain. It would also be difficult for any country if the richest region could break free at will.
On the other hand Hong Kong has a legal right for local rules for at least 50 years after the handover in 1997. That treaty was broken last year.
So legally Spain is in the right and China is wrong.
No, significantly more authority was devolved to the region from the democratic governments following Franco. However there was no point in history where Catalonia breaking away was an explicitly allowed option (of course).
But more importantly it is a joke to compare the situation in Catalonia with that of Hong Kong. It’s not like we see trains full of people on the way to torture in concentration camps leaving Barcelona.
Is there? Please elaborate, because to me it merely looks like a matter of perspective.
So it's not the perspective, it's the legality of goals and methods. For instance in Russia, you can't protest the war in Ukraine, so going on the streets about it isn't "just protesting", one is willingly breaking the law for the cause.
Control what people can say, share and do.
Obviously GitHub is essential an essential tool for modern day programers, and the CCP only needs to give the access to a version of that tool under the control of the CCP.
Gitee also put the site language choice in the footer - odd choice. Plus some UI bugs on the page. Yuck.
>Opensource to China
>Founded in ShenZhen, China in 2013
>The leading SAAS provider in China
>©OSCHINA. All rights reserved
>git@oschina.cn
>12377@2x 违法和不良信息举报中心 粤ICP备12009483号
The use of "They" seems inappropriate here, which is belittling the entrepreneurs' ambition. The culture of code sharing in China is indeed different from US. So I bet gitee has a lot of features tailored to that market.
I hope the people ultimately get the houses they paid for. What a terrible thing it would be to put 20-40% down for a home and to never have it delivered. I would assume there is going to be some sort of bailout?
You should reexamine your assumptions about these sources. Sounds like they deserve credit for reporting it earlier.
So when building stopped altogether, due to government crackdown of developer loans, there aren’t any new entrants, and no greater fool to buy the worthless property, a lot of wealth might disappear in China.
It’s like US 2008, but much worse. Or perhaps US 2023… who knows?
It will hurt, but the sideshow is that a lot of the stuff they make in China may get cheaper for us.
Then a link to a Mao speech. Weird
Of course, this is a double edge play. Notice how the message boils down to “the party is right! It’s probably the fault of some dark, greedy figure(s) somewhere!”. But by absolving the government from ever being wrong you remove the possibility of them ever improving and fixing themselves. So someone(s) get sent to jail, others are demoted, and everything is swept unde the rug, but the structural problems remain and will appear again and again.
And since the Party represents all Chinese, these elements are clearly attacking the Chinese people themselves so the only solution is to rally around the Party and help it solve the problem!
/s
It is a risk to your life to protest the national government, but the national government allows protest to local governments as a means to reduce steam buildup.
This results in over the top worship of Mao during local government protests as a hedge, because it creates a potential photo op where the local government is tearing down praise to Mao.
Could the plea for help from the national government be sincere? My understanding is that in early Soviet history, many people were sure that if Lenin/Stalin knew about the awful things local commissars were doing, the great leader would surely order such acts to stop.
Obviously by the Brezhnev/Andropov years very, very few people would be so gullible as to believe such, and I suppose that it's awfully late in the history of the PRC and CCP to expect otherwise of the Chinese, but the thought at least came to mind.
Another way to interpret this would be a (much, much more serious) counterpart, in the US and the West, during the past half decade of the de facto necessity in most parts of online discourse of prefixing anything that is not left of center-adherent with "I hate Trump, but".
Mao is an icon of mass initiated political movement. You thus saw Mao and Maoism get badmouthed universally nowadays. And you wonder why that's the case...
If noone would do anything (no boycott), some customers would have to pay mortgage for apartments that won't be finished ever.
With boycott, the blast radius will be bigger, possibly affecting the banking system.
What options do authorities have?
People who boycott mortgages get their properties confiscated by court eventually, and if any developments suffer issues government should aid developers to ensure any paid customers get their property done.
In Russia it's quite common occurrence that a very late project by a failed developer is eventually completed and the lenders get their apartments at last, after regional government intervention.
In China it should be even simpler as the money never leave the escrow account. I wonder if there are un-escrow provisions if developer fails to deliver - in theory there should be no risk at all.
But if they don't, forget what I've said.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens, that is for sure!
I’m not sure how big of a problem that really is, but I could see it toppling a number of local banks.
Construction companies in the USA (and the west typically) don't get paid up front 100% for the full amount, but is often paid "pro-rata" based on milestones or % completed.
The funds a released by an escrow (which the purchaser and the bank, if it's a mortgage, would choose).
The situation described in china is not like that above - the developers got paid 100% of the cost of the build upfront, by the purchaser. The bank loans the funds to the purchaser for this purpose (at 60% LVR for example).
The bank has the title as collateral - but since the property isn't built, there's no property to sell if it goes bad. It's just the land title. The reason the banks do this is because it's a politically driven mandate - the CCP in the past, wanted more construction, and this is one way to drive risk away from developers (so there'd be more developers!).
It's perfectly economically rational if your equity is less than zero, which can happen when you put 50% down. It just means your valuation of the asset dropped in half.
If you don't pay, the property will be taken off you, and probably valued at a high valuation (because the property developer wouldn't want to have their unbuilt properties selling for cents on the dollar). That means you probably will escape bankruptcy or any further debt.
which would contradict the assumptions that lead to the decision not to pay.
Therefore, i suspect that the (half-completed) property would indeed be worthless (even to the bank), and is not a suitable form of collateral to recover any debt from. It might be the case where the bank eats the loss - or those who stopped paying the mortgage would be forced to pay (unlikely if this is a widespread issue as it causes social unrest).
My prediction is that the state owned banks would eat the loss, and wait out the confidence crisis - which might take 10 yrs - but then real estate will resume as before as a form of investment (and the cycle begins again).
When you have an over-estimated stock on the market, it's going to drop. Eventually.
Buying off-plan is common worldwide despite what others are saying in here.
So it's still a loss for those purchasers, but the builders don't get the full payment upfront like described in china.
In the late 1980's Japanese real estate was the most valuable in the world, then it collapsed and they have not recovered.
This is a big secular shift for China. All of the previous projections were wrong, just like those indicating Japan would take over the world in the 1980's.
This is where China comes out of 'catch up' mode, and is now finding it's 'reality equilibrium' with the rest of the world.
the one big difference with all the previous examples is that China is authoritarian, where as the others were all (at least on paper) democratic.
China _could_ mandate the population to perform actions that the other tiger economies couldn't. I would be hesitant to assume that historical economic performance of japan and korea would give much indication to what future economic performance would be in china.
So when you're in a glasshouse don't throw stones. Always the hypocritical "look China bad us good". I'm so tired of the propaganda - an EU resident.
Before you start judging a person for being dirty, make sure you're not dirty yourself.
If someone was stealing and breaking stuff every time they came over to your house, you wouldn’t let them in anymore either.
Utter unrestricted access to all from everywhere is a odd notion. Is it also somehow hypocritical to censor isis propaganda?
The only thing you can get is the propaganda from the Kremlin. That propaganda is the crucial part of the Russian warfare. It functions to sow doubt about the truth. It is instrumental to get people to believe that Ukraine downed MH17. If Russia commits war crimes, its media start to spout different explanations, often mutually exclusive ones. Lies, damned lies, stupid lies, but it takes a lot of effort to deconstruct even the most plainly stupid ones of them. The effect is that you see a variety of nonsense, which makes you think about it as it sows confusion. This is known as the Firehose of Falsehoods. You are not sure anymore, some of your friends might buy one of the lies, while another one might stick better with you because it fits your beliefs better. This has nothing to do with understanding the truth.
You cannot compare our free press to the russian media. I am very critical about our media, also because they seem to be ignorant about the dynamics of our media which the Kremlin perfectly knows to exploit.
One of the pitfalls we have been observing is the one of False Balance, where you present the statements of one side as is, although it is complete garbage. Deconstructing false statements takes time, knowledge and a deep understanding of the context of events. Now look at the financial incentives and you see why we have got a huge problem in our western societies that rely on commercial entities to provide our news.
The bad news is: Firehose of Falsehoods is extremely effective! Look at Trump and his relationships with truth. He gives a new meaning to it.
Now you might think you are smart and special, so propaganda has no effect on you. Just like everyone else thinks. It is a poison, there is no reason to drink it.
China has enormous leverage both on GitHub and especially on Microsoft.
Likewise, business as a whole in the US (and elsewhere) has no issue supporting the more authoritarian and repressive of the two political parties. They prefer it, in fact, because of what it does for them in limiting worker and consumer rights. When you're in the upper class of society, most of the repressive rules don't personally apply to you.
This is potentially the start of a boring partisan flame war. Let's not do that.
The Republican and Democratic parties both have some platforms that strike outsiders as authoritarian and repressive. But debating them on HN doesn't work well IME.
If you're waiting for the S&P500 to optimize for freedom and democracy, and justice, and reasonably-priced love, you're going to be in for a very, very long wait. It actively optimizes for the comfort of its executives and shareholder value first and second, and for the rest of society not at all.
Corporations, while it might pain them on some level, want to exist in a free, open and democratic sociality since it gives them access to courts and people in power. In Authoritarian systems, people at the top, just take whatever they want and there is nothing to be done about it.
Also, a foreign corporation is never going to have access to the higher levels of the Authoritarian government because they are foreign. Places like China don't care about foreign corporations because at the end of the day, there is nothing they can do to help the head authoritarian.
Yeah, I think there's a reason the best and brightest in China often try to immigrate to the USA, Canada, Australia, etc. Its not for the food, believe me.
If China could afford to damage these banks (or if the people who run them fail to have the right connections and attitude), it seems like it would actually benefit the government to publicize these boycotts as further support for the crackdown.
In the US, we'd just call the papers and get them to all run stories about a new trend among right-wing conspiracy theorists to stop paying their mortgages, relate them somehow to tax protesters and sovereign citizens, call them freeloaders, and insist that the figures being spread around about the number of people involved are probably from covert Russian sources.
edit: I mean, after that we'd start censoring, demonetizing, think-tank fact-checking and downranking, but only after accusing everyone involved of being a terrorist.