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Comment by marianatom | Hacker News Reader

Government numbers, enough said.

This is a government that just raised the retirement age from 60 to 65, proclaimed that one can take on a mortgage at age 70 and let the heirs inherit the mortgage, and do not issue passports freely. Where its banks has delayed its customers from paying off mortgage in full, and from withdrawing large amount of cash. Does that sound like a healthy economy?

Again, watch online testimonials from average citizens, and you will see entirely empty malls in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oApzG9ycwkw, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBpybdnYVEs

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You can also look at the US-China trade numbers which are at record high if you don't trust the Chinese government.

that's for 2022. 2023 numbers will be horrendous, based on the 40% export collapse seen in January 2023.

Hong Kong exports post biggest plunge in 70 years https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade/Hong-Kong-exports-post...

No. They won't. That's what the manufacturing PMI shows.

What accounts for a 40% collapse? That's an enormous shortfall for such a large economy.

- factories in Southeast Asia that were started shortly after the Trump sanctions in 2017 or covid 2020, that have finally come online

- CHIP act in mid 2022 from Biden that spurred Apple to finally drag its immoral lazy feet

- Russia invasion of Ukraine, and Chinese proclamation of friendship with no limits shortly after

- covid lockdowns in China in early 2022 that shut down factories

- increasing electric rationing every year in China that shut down factories

- Foxconn factory riots

- very loud geopolitical risks that C level execs can no longer pretend not to hear

- can't move money out of China. 'I can't get my money out': Billionaire investor Mark Mobius says China is restricting flows of capital out of the country. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/mark-mobius-...

> - can't move money out of China. 'I can't get my money out': Billionaire investor Mark Mobius says China is restricting flows of capital out of the country. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/mark-mobius-...

This has been true for 10+ years

Which is always hilarious to me that people complain about USD as a global reserve currency and then propose CNY take over.

Whatever the US is doing with sanctions is still much looser than China's controls on capital, and they've made it an explicit point that they would rather keep capital controls and the ability to suddenly put in even more draconian ones, than to become a global reserve currency.

This is easily explainable if you look at a whole chart for the past 5 or 10 years: https://tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/exports

HK (and China) export always plunges in the month with the Lunar New Year Holiday. In 2022, that would be February, but in 2023, it's January, hence the large decrease. In fact, HK export this Lunar New Year is the third highest ever, only standing behind 2021 and 2022.

Hk isn’t the main way goods leave China. Guangdong, Shanghai and Tianjin all have massive ports and are still not the only ones. I don’t know why this is being used as a yard stick for anything other than HK is going through a pretty intense change since the failed protest movement.

There are certain things that China appears to be the leader in, in particular LFP / Sodium Ion batteries (CATL / Gotion).

It will be interesting to see if the US decides to do to China for those that CHina did to the US for practically ... everything. Essentially take the technology from them with "partnerships" (you see CATL proposing and building factories in EU and US now) that will effectively onshore whatever advantages they have there.

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