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Comment by berserk1010 | Hacker News Reader

China doesn't have the money nor economy to support such low yield effort for long term

China has ordered its local governments to halt public-private partnership projects identified as "problematic" and replaced a 10% budget spending allowance for these ventures with a vetting mechanism by Beijing as it tries to curb municipal debt risks. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-orders-local-gove...

China’s Economy Has Picked Up Traits Reminiscent Of The Great Depression. https://www.forbes.com/sites/miltonezrati/2024/01/22/chinas-...

Also from unconfirmed resource: Central government orders high debt load places like Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Chungking, Guizhou, and a few others to stop any new constructions in 2024, and only allow constructions to provide water, electric, or heat.

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Every year, economists are saying China is collapsing.. yet they keep deliver, they seem immune to the organized FUD

Collapse hasn't been the suggestion in fact. That's a straw premise to distract from the negative claims (which are supported by persistently bad economic data).

The US didn't collapse due to the great depression either.

What is being suggested, is that China is facing a very bad economic stretch as a result of their extraordinarily poor command economy choices.

Beijing's fabled (supposed) long-term thinking has shown itself to be a complete fraud. The Emperor, Xi, is wearing no clothes, as is the case with all dictators. An economy the scale and complexity of China's can't be run effectively with an authoritarian command approach. We have been seeing the proof of that increasingly since the great recession hit, wherein China switched to forever stimulus & debt fakery to prop up their flagging economy. In the span of a decade China became the most indebted nation in world history, while their growth sank below that of the US (which is a very mature, slower growth economy). And now the imploding demographics are setting in hard and fast, while the affluent world shuns China (leaving them with key partners like Russia, Iran, North Korea).

It's quite obvious that while China kicked the can down the road for a long time, the cost of doing so just keeps increasing in the form of negatives on their economy.

economy is weakening globally, it affects everyone, including both the US and the EU, so your argument falls flat

any positive comment about China gets downvoted to oblivion, further emphasizing the theory of an organized FUD against China

> any positive comment about China gets downvoted to oblivion, further emphasizing the theory of an organized FUD against China

Just based on this very comment thread you're wrong, so how are we to trust any of your other rebuttals?

Even well-sourced critiques of China are greytext so one may as well assume the opposite if they were taking your position.

>Beijing's fabled (supposed) long-term thinking has shown itself to be a complete fraud. ...<snip>

Been hearing all that and more for at least the past 25 years or so, and still China's doing fine, blew Japan out of the #2 GDP spot, and far as I can tell is winning the Cold War of our present era.

So, thanks for reaffirming what you tried to refute.

Are they doing fine if there will be 500,000,000 fewer Chinese by 2100?

> blew Japan out of the #2 GDP spot, and far as I can tell is winning the Cold War of our present era.

That's like the bare minimum when you have a 10x higher population. Also at the current pace (both population and GDP China will never even come close to US, the gap over the last 10 years is only getting wider: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2022...

Not sure if you call this "delivering"

1.) The heavy market losses in 2024 come hot on the heels of a bruising run last year, when the CSI 300 index, comprising 300 major stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell more than 11%. By contrast, the United States’ benchmark S&P 500 index climbed 24% in 2023, while Europe’s grew almost 13%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 soared 28% last year and is still going strong, notching gains of nearly 10% so far this month. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/business/china-stock-market-f...

2.) China suffers from deflation, while the rest of the world combats inflation. Not only does deflation signal a stagnating economy, it can lead to high unemployment, unaffordable debt repayment, and dismal outcomes for businesses. In the worst cases, deflation can lead an economy into a recession, or even a depression. https://www.wsj.com/world/china/deflation-worries-deepen-in-...

3.) Crushing debt. Going back further, China accounts for over half of the entire world’s total debt-to-GDP increases since 2008. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/backgrounder-china-econo... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-01-06/bloomb...

4.) China’s youth unemployment rate hit consecutive record highs in recent months. From April to June, the jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds reached 20.4%, 20.8% and 21.3% respectively. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/economy/china-economy-july-sl.... For reference, G7 countries is at 10%, US is at 8% https://data.oecd.org/unemp/youth-unemployment-rate.htm

These are just problems. Just like how the US has some really big glaring problems:

1. Incapable of building infrastructure, can't build the CA hsr while China built an entire network across the country.

2. Can't raise the population out of poverty. You see homeless people and drug addicts everywhere.

3. Unemployment going up, Inflation is going up.

4. Wealth ienquality is rising. The Housing is becoming more and more unaffordable for most Americans.

I mean this is "delivering" too. As if 4 random economic problems a country is facing is indicative of total collapse.

Problems are not a like-for-like exchange. It's a completely meaningless statement you're making. Having cancer and having a cold are both illnesses. The severity of the two are not alike.

The US' unemployment fell to 3.7 percent end of December. [1] Inflation fell to 3.4 percent. Please do your research before commenting.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-growth-accelerates...

Please don't lie and mis characterize the situation before commenting. Thank you.

Inflation going down and unemployment going down doesn't characterize the overall situation for the last year.

What your saying a month of the opposite trend indicates the US economy has no more problems? That china can't possibly ever have a month of upward ticks?

My statement is meaningless. That's the point of my statement. It's an example to show how meaningless the statement about China is.

I'm sick and tired of people who get emotional and are patriotic. Why can't people be level headed and just talk about facts rather then "defend" their stance or their own country.

> I'm sick and tired of people who get emotional and are patriotic. Why can't people be level headed and just talk about facts rather then "defend" their stance or their own country.

I specifically called out false claims you made out as fact. Your claims were not factual and I did not misconstrue them.

The US is at one of the lowest unemployment rates over its entire history. It is at the lowest level over the last 54 years. [1] That's fact. Your claim was false.

Inflation in America is not under any long- or short-term trend of increasing. That is a false claim you have made and continue to shelter behind. Inflation increased because of a global calamity the entire world suffered under. That was an acute crisis, not a trend.

China has an unemployment rate among its youth well over 20 percent. That is not a blip. That is institutional failure caused by decades of mismanaging a population under an authoritarian government.

[1] https://www.commerce.gov/news/blog/2023/02/news-unemployment...

Everybody said the USSR was collapsing and it kept growing until the country collapsed. China’s GDP numbers are notoriously opaque and difficult to vet. It’s no different than saying Los Angeles is going to get flattened by an earthquake. Its inevitable but good luck predicting it.

The USSR had obviously deep political dysfunction; it was a hollow gerontocracy in its latter decades. It had run out of ideas and was desperately looking to the West for inspiration.

There is a superpower that bears stark resemblance to the dying USSR, and it's not the PRC.

The fall of the USSR was more of a political collapse caused by elites thinking another system would be better, not economic collapse.

I've seen a few hundred too many "the Chinese economy is about to collapse" stories to believe any of them.

Maybe not collapse but a slowdown and significant decline in some sectors seems like a real risk. Which would be a big issue because China is still quite poor per capita and at this pace it's unlikely to ever catch up with the US:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?end=2...

GDP is a terrible metric, the usual example is France's being lower than every single state including Mississippi.

I'm mainly talking about the growth rates rather than the actual values so this is hardly relevant.

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