What China's slow-motion real estate crisis means for the global economy

That said, "European investors remain, by far, the largest holders of FDI stock in Africa, led by the United Kingdom ($60 billion), France ($54 billion) and the Netherlands ($54 billion)" [0].

China's OBOR tends to be infamous largely for it's infeasibility. It's the IDC equivalent of a subprime loan, as most OBOR projects in Africa tended to be those that larger FDI contributors decided to pass on.

There is a regional segmentation aspect as well. Africa is large and some regions saw outsized Chinese investment (DRC for example), but in other regions there was much more competition. For example, most FDI in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia) and North Africa came from Europe, Türkiye, and the Gulf States.

In the former British colonies in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan), Indian Ocean (Seychelles, Mauritius), and Mozambique Chinese companies were directly competing with long established Indian and Pakistani conglomerates due to the centuries old existing Asian business community in the region.

In Southern Africa China would be competing with South Africa along with smaller players like India.

I can't speak for the rest of Africa, but I've seen China having a significant impact in West Africa and the DRC.

[0] - https://unctad.org/press-material/investment-flows-africa-dr...

when the CCP arrests people for reporting things they dont like, it's no wonder foreign journalists don't want to go there.

It seems missiles don’t solve all the things else there would be an “invasion” on going for 600+ days.

I guess war is harder than Internet comments.

There's more than 100km of sea between Taiwan and China. Not China (nor anyone else) has anything close to the blue water amphibious assault fleet it would take for an effective invasion force to cross it. It would take multiple years to build such a fleet, impossible to hide, and while they built it Taiwan and her allies would assemble the world's largest anti-shipping missile arsenal. During the hours it would take to sail across, every single one of those huge, slow-moving, landing ships filled with thousands of men and megatons of materiél would be targeted with dozens, maybe hundreds, of missiles apiece. I doubt a single ship would make it even halfway.

Or forget amphibious assault, say China tries to go airborne. An even longer period unmistakably building an unprecedented heavy cargo aircraft fleet. An even longer period for Taiwan and her allies to build her already impressive air defences into an impregnable shield. Again, not a single aircraft makes it even over Taiwan's territorial waters. In fact, once war is declared and it's game on, it's a valid question if any of these large, unstealthy, slow cargo aircraft even survive long enough to be shot down over water.

The Russian experience has indeed been eye-opening, but not in the direction you assumed. Developments in missile technology have totally changed the game. Even today, the vastly superior Russian air force cannot fly over ukrainian territory. The Black Sea Fleet has been driven away - and Ukraine does not even have a navy! And even given their massive advantages in size and military strength, and the 100x easier task of invading and resupplying over land, it's far from clear that Russia will prevail.

No, you can't really compare the two. Russia could always have invaded any of their neighbours if they decided to. China literally can't invade Taiwan, not if you assume even the most basic preparation and competence of herself and her allies. The best they could do is perhaps a blockade, and hope for capitulation. There are pretty much no options for a traditional invasion that do not, with rather high confidence, lead to the fastest, most deadly, most expensive, and most total military defeat in history.

All of this in my own non-professional opinion of course, but I'm not completely uneducated on the topic. There's more - far more - information laying things out much better than I ever could, I encourage anyone overly concerned about an imminent conventional war over Taiwan to seek it out.

The United States turns the weak into allies, and it's allies into enemies. We gave Russia $180 billion in today's currency after WWII. After the collapse of the USSR, the US was the one to welcome Russia into the World bank and IMF. After 2001, Russia was widely considered our closest strategic partner in the war on terror. [1] Now our reckless expansion of NATO has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians.

We practically created the Taliban and ISIS, or at least gave them the tools and circumstance to be lethally effective. We created the circumstance for the Iranian revolution, the Cuban revolution, countless others that have hurt us since.

Of course we embraced China, we're a python looking to smother them.

https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85962.htm

Math now corrected, I still want my extra 1.2 million back.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

If you're a poor, 2 person household in a city, you have two main choices (all other choices means leaving the city you live in) :

- Work and stay poor, but comfortable enough. This means maybe getting enough money on the side to buy a big appartement then start a family at 40-45 yo (20 years ago you had the same choice, except the age was 30-35. It's worst in more expensive cities).

- Try to get on welfare and have kids asap. You'll have to live in a worse area, with less disposable income, you'll be a bit hungry sometimes, but it might be worth it. If you have family/support system in the area whose reputation can protect you from the worse, it's all good (hence 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants have more opportunities to make this choice, as their support system is often stronger than 5th-Xth gen immigrants or native Americans).

Do you have kids yourself? Are you a low-income worker? How much do you have each months after paying rent+utilities+food? Because I remember clearly my parents earning less than that cost, and trying to do calculations to avoid downgrading to a smaller house. They couldn't avoid it and I shared a room with my brother until I was 16, when I joined a 'boarding school' (closest translation I could find, but it was public, free and not at all like Anglo boarding schools).

This can be seen first hand with Beijing+Tianjin versus Hebei.

Those 2 cities were under direct State Council control so it was easier to push economic reforms versus a largely rural province like Hebei, plus they were close enough that it made sense for anyone half ambitious in Hebei to leave for the big city than to stay back.

This is what happened in NY State as well with NYC and IL with Chicago. It's called the primate effect in economics.

If interested, the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, the China Guiding Cases Project at Stanford Law, the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics at UChicago, and Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT have all been working on the Rural-Urban Divide problem in Developing Countries. Chinese Policymakers tend to work with Stanford and Indian Policymakers tend to work with UChicago and MIT.

Papers and books published by members of these centers would teach you all that you need to know about Developmental Economics (or at least enough for a pre-doc).