> Several analysts said in recent weeks that China’s economic growth was already testing the lower end of Beijing’s full-year target of around 6-6.5%, which is likely to spur more policy easing. Second-quarter growth cooled to 6.2%, the weakest in nearly 30 years.
6% growth would be the envy of many countries. For comparison, the last time the US did that was 1984, after back-to-back recessions and a flood of deficit-financed defense spending:
> 6% growth would be the envy of many countries. For comparison, the last time the US did that was 1984
No, not exactly. It has to be contextualised. Growing 2% if you're already rich is fine. It's essentially a promise they'll stay rich, and get ever so slightly richer. But 2% growth for someone who earns next to nothing, is basically a promise that they'll be poor forever.
So let's compare the US in 1984 when it last had China's growth, and China today when it last had... China's growth.
In 1984, US (inflation-adjusted, 2011 dollars) had a GDP per capita of $32k. China today is at $12k.
6% might be okay for the US. But for the almost 1.4 billion Chinese (who live on an income distribution, i.e. almost 700 million people living on less than that $12k, and hundreds of millions on quite very little), 6% may not be the promise they'll accept from their government for long.
Not saying it's low-growth, but you can't just compare it to rich countries. The standard is very different, and China will be anxious to crank it back up.
If your GDP is "growing" 2%, and your population is growing 1.2%, and inflation is 1%, you're getting less productive -- not more. Your quality of life is probably declining.
I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just saying -- it is possible to "grow" without improvement. See the Malthusian Trap that plagued humanity from the beginning of time until the Industrial Revolution.
It's probably better to just measure productivity & quality of life directly. It isn't easy. But it's not easy to measure GDP either. Measure what matters, you know?
GDP growth rates are generally reported "real" i.e. inflation is taken out. But yes you want GDP to grow at least as fast as population to maintain a given standard of living. The US population growth rate has been below 2% since at least the mid-70s.
South Africa would love to grow at 6%. We’ve had like 2-3% growth for the last 30 years. I dare say we have bigger poverty problems than China so we really need it.
But isn't China's growth still mostly in the non-poor parts of it, and isn't that 12k figure pulled down by the exchange rate and the massive rural population?
That 6% is concentrated in the "first world" part of China and should still be regarded as impressive.
It'll show you: List of Chinese provinces by share (%) of national GDP per capita 2000 - 2017
You'd expect if all provinces grew equally (e.g. doubled in size), that their relative shares would not change between 2000 and 2017. (A) If poorer provinces grew faster than richer provinces, they'd grow in relative share. (B) The same holds for if rich provinces grew faster than poorer provinces, then rich provinces would grow in share. (C)
So sort on the year 2000. You see Shanghai at the top with 374% of the nation's average GDP per capita. At the bottom is Guizhou with 35% of the nation's average. Shanghai goes down to 214% while Guizhou goes down to 64%. Both grew in absolute terms, but the poorer province grew much faster.
A bit more data. It tends to hold across the board with few exceptions.
> isn't that 12k figure pulled down by the exchange rate
No, the measure is: GDP per capita adjusted for price changes over time (inflation) and price differences between countries. It should take this into account.
> the massive rural population
I'm not sure how it does... First I'd want to reiterate that, uplifting rural people from poverty, both by developing these areas and by creating jobs (causing population shifts away from rural areas) has been a huge part of the economic development in China. If you'd dismiss this growth, you'd have never reached $12k in the first place.
Second, dismissing the rural population is exactly one of the biggest problems you could imagine for China. One of their biggest fears is that they leave hundreds of millions of people behind, upset, in poverty. The only reason they can keep an orderly dictatorial system is because they deliver on the promise to the vast majority of the population, many of whom poor: lots of jobs, annual wage growth, hope and optimism. Low growth prospects for a massive rural population would be disastrous. As such, even if GDP per Capita was $100k in some small areas, if that $12k (or lower) figure is not rapidly developing for China's massive rural population, that'd be seen as a huge policy issue right there. The argument that the $12k figure may be pulled down by rural poor should underline how worrisome relatively low-growth is.
The 6% becomes concentrated by internal migration from villages to cities and from cities to bigger cities. Without the massive rural population acting as a source of cheap unskilled labor, the richer parts of China would have a hard time maintaining the same level of growth.
The figures are adjusted for prices and expressed in 2011 dollars. As such, any number (e.g. $12k) on the graph, whether it be in 1980, 90s, 000s, 2010, should represent the same buying power.
Calculations and methodologies can be off, of course. Purchasing power is part objective, part subjective. (e.g. how to compare a computer that is 10% more expensive, can do has 500% more calculations per second, but also just runs MS Office mostly the same compared to last year's computer... you can have different methodologies, one which says prices went up by 10%, others prices went down by almost 80%). But in principle, if you believe the figures are correct, then buying power has been taken into account.
In addition, some analysts believe that China's official GDP growth numbers are overinflated, and the actual GDP growth is 1-2% lower than the official government data.
for example, Li Keqiang, the current premier of China (the #2 guy behind Xi) measures a different set of numbers [1] to approximate China's GDP growth because he doesn't trust the official GDP figures due to inaccurate local government growth data.
Chinese GDP is "made up" according to Li himself in an leaked memo in the mid 2000s. The context behind this statement is that Chinese GDP figures are irrelevant to the actual operations of the Chinese economy and calculated off low-effort and unreliable provincial measures to appease foreign audiences - the government understands the limitations of statistic reporting in China. They know any number derived would be largely meaningless, so here's some back of the napkin estimates for international audiences who clamor for it so much. Then people take it out of context and accuse manipulation or falsification when no one should take it seriously since garbage in garbage out. In addition to LKI, the government uses other internal measures like TSF (total social financing) [1] while ignoring the GDP to gauge economic health.
As for foreign commentaries and studies on Chinese GDP, they're as unreliable as the Chinese figures themselves because the data simply isn't there. The most rigorous western analysis of Chinese GDP I'm aware of was conducted by CSIS who comprehensively reverse engineered Chinese GDP reporting from ground up, sector by sector using a variety of official sources, and concluded China is (1 trillion USD) larger than official numbers purported to be: Broken Abacus? A More Accurate Gauge of China's Economy [2].
That's not to say it's anymore an accurate reflection of ground truths, but at least it tries to reconstruct from the bottom up. Unless people believe the Chinese government expends vast resources manipulating every bit of data to comport to their GDP estimates which by all accounts they don't even care about.
There is definitely a bit of that. A decade ago, the provinces would even under report their numbers for various reasons. But no one can deny that China has had growth, and GDP added activities include things like tearing down a building and building another one in its place, or simply having the building appreciate in value, so GDP itself is not a great measure.
Land value appreciation is not part of GDP. Buildings on land typically depreciate instead of appreciate, but upgrading or remodeling are definitely GDP.
While land value appreciation (which gp cited) isn't part of GDP, rent (and imputed rent) are part of GDP, so that still flows through to GDP (at least to the extent that rent and property values are related).
Yes, but China on the whole is still fairly poor. It's much easier to catch up - many poor(er) countries that get their economy going again show immense growth until they get catch up with the rich countries. Much of the eastern bloc (that recovered well) are in a similar situation.
US on the whole is also fairly poor. For example, 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck can't afford an unexpected 400 dollar expense. And China has far better support for the poor than US with things like healthcare, education, and public transit.
Living paycheck to payckeck with a new phone every 2 years, a new car lease upgrade every 5, a mortgage on a 3 bedroom house, and eating out 4 times a week, and 1000 TV channels is hardly what someone would consider 'poor.' It's just sustainably stressful and largely optional. This is why I feel the paycheck-to-paycheck metric/rhetoric is obnoxious, on 100k a year I can live paycheck-to-paycheck if I so desire, on 20k a year I can live at 75% of my means and save 400$+ as well. People's personal choices are not a comment on the economy, they're a comment on the fiscal education system. I personally save about 33% of my paycheck on 32k per year in one of the top 10 most expensive global cities.
Look at health outcomes, us has a declining life expectancy, china has almost caught up and will probably overtake soon. Is that just fiscal education?
I said that not having 400$ is a failure of fiscal planning and doesn't indicate that the population is poor.
Declining life expectancy is not an indication that the population is poor either. Consider that obesity, which is linked to higher mortality rates, did not become an issue until the 1900s in countries that passed wealth thresholds allowing such a problem at scale. Similarly with allergies, car crash fatalities, lead poisoning in paint, any number of life-shortening effects come from wealth in a society and are counterbalanced by improving health care levels.
I would expect that declining life expectancy is over-represented in the poorest stratum of society (but I will look this up to be sure). It is not going to be rich kids getting anaphylaxis that are making up the numbers. Even obesity prevalence will be a function of the SES of the individual within the population. Same with drug abuse etc, etc. If these things are getting worse while economic indicators for the country overall are positive, then it shows that inequality within the country is getting worse in real ways.
I was with you on car crashes & lead paint, but how do allergies come from a wealthy society? Or do you mean that only in a wealthy society are there resources/medical infrastructure available to diagnose them?
It would be a reference to the hygiene hypothesis, that being too "clean" leads to lack of exposure to things we evolved to encounter in the environment (worms mostly) which causes the immune system to go a bit wrong, causing allergies and autoimmune conditions.
Ah, okay. I've heard that before but thought it was basically fringe science. My assumption has simply been that allergies always existed like this, but those with more severe ones died off very young and the concept of "allergy" somewhat non existent. I'll admit the possibility though, ever if I'm very reluctant to lump it together with more obvious wealth-associatated issues.
Given how small the US decline is, were China to stop the massive supplies of fentanyl they're intentionally allowing to pour into the US, that decline would probably arrest. The Chinese fentanyl is killing people at a young age, which hammers the life expectancy calculations.
Remind me how China feels about what was done to them in the Opium Wars.
The US isn't alone in this however. Britain is starting to see declining life expectancies. Is China better off than Britain? It's laughable.
"UK life expectancy drops while other western countries improve"
Relative to whom exactly? Us engineers posting on HN? I'm not making light of anyone's circumstances here, but living paycheck to paycheck doesn't make you poor, and billions of people around the world would love to be that "poor" (and many of them live in China.) Very different definitions of "poor".
"Dude", you obviously just don't want your incomplete world view challenged. Details matter here. Yes, Flint MI has a drinking water problem and it's deplorable. That doesn't generalize to the rest of the nation. Health Care is an issue as well. Our low income citizens have coverage problems and it's an issue being debated at the highest levels currently. If you care to dig further, you'd also find that we have better health outcomes for those who are covered than does most of the world. It's a complex issue, but just like your Flint comment, it doesn't generalize to "most people in the US are poor".
I'm fine with have a reasoned discussion, but you don't seem to want that, so you're not worth talking to.
You have no idea. I've been to poor parts of China. People heat themselves with the coals of wood-fired stove which they used to cook meals. I once saw a family that owned a government subsidized washing machine. They couldn't afford the electricity to operate the machine, so they use the tumbler to store household items.
You're making an incorrect generalization about a large country by misleadingly citing isolated examples which seem to support your point once you realize that you can't back your initial argument up in a meaningful way. You may as well be arguing that England is a poor country because London has a low income neighborhood or two. Stop grasping at straws.
There's nothing misleading about it. One percent of the population in US owns more than half the wealth in the country. Majority of the population lives in impoverished conditions without access to basic needs such as public transit, healthcare, or education. This is a well documented fact, and if you think I'm grasping at straws here's you're just utterly ignorant.
>Where are you coming up with this nonsense? Let's see the numbers.
Where do you think all the people working in Amazon gulags come from exactly. You think people work 12 hours shifts pissing in bottles because they enjoy it.
>Oh, well if you say so then.
It's like you're too stupid to use Google or something. Here you go little buddy:
>Here's another number that may surprise you – to be in the top half (50%) of all earners you need to earn more than $29,999.99 a year. The number of people earning less than $30,000 accounts for 48.06% of the population.
I don't think "living paycheck to paycheck" is a good metric for quality of life since there can be a large cultural influence.
With the median income in the US being 5x higher, I imagine $400 of unexpected expenses would be much worse for a Chinese citizen, assuming they don't have something saved up of course.
> 40% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck can't afford an unexpected 400 dollar expense
The 40% claim (regarding N% of Americans that can't afford a sudden ~$400-$500 expense) is entirely fraudulent, and repeated ad nauseam as an easy - and ignorant - hit on the US.
The real number is around 12%-14% at worst. The routine Fed survey that most people reference (while ignoring what the Fed actually said) makes this clear. Numerous well-written articles have been posted over the last several years pointing out the fraudulent nature of the claim.
Here's the money line from the Fed that buries this lie:
"The Fed also asks respondents how a $400 emergency expense that they had to pay would affect their ability to pay their other bills. Eighty-five percent report that they would still be able to pay all their bills. Only 14% say that the emergency expense would result in their not being able to pay some bills."
A Bloomberg writer recently demolished it as well:
> The question comes from the annual “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households” by the Federal Reserve. The report finds, in 2018, that 61% of adults would cover a $400 unexpected expense using cash (or its equivalent).
Note: that's the origination of the error. The propagandists then remove the 61% and magically claim that everyone left (~40%) can't cover the expense.
> Instead, as the Fed report makes clear, though “the remaining 4 in 10 adults” “would have more difficulty covering such an expense,” many of them would be able to make it work by carrying a credit card balance or borrowing from friends and family.
> The report states: “Twelve percent of adults would be unable to pay the expense by any means.”
> The report also goes out of its way to make clear that some of the 39% who wouldn’t use cash might still have $400 in the bank: “It is possible that some would choose to borrow even if they had $400 available, preserving their cash as a buffer for other expenses.” In a footnote, the report even cites a 2016 study finding that 76 percent of households had $400 in liquid assets, even after taking into account monthly expenses.
> The common misinterpretation of this finding in the study is particularly strange in light of two other questions on the same survey. The Fed asks respondents whether they are able to pay all of their bills in full. Only 17% say they can’t pay some bills. Again, 17%, not 39%."
If the definition of afford was "to manage to bear without serious detriment," then the 40% claim may have some merit if taking out the $400 in liquid assets was considered a serious detriment. In my experience, Fed figures are not good at accounting for the fluctuations in monthly spending of "real world" families. They expect monthly spending to stay static on a monthly basis throughout the entire year.
There's also that the other cases rely on being indebted, which means that they cannot afford it with their current means. Sure they can cover expenses, but the example of the debt-adverse Germans wouldn't see it as being able to afford them.
I don't quite get this statement. Insurance generally doesn't trigger on "if you can't pay", it's so you don't have to pay to begin with. Savings don't play into it, if you have insurance coverage there is no need to save money, it's effectively already paid for.
They had a century of built-in slack they had to work their way out of. It can’t be maintained indefinitely especially with an aging pop., but this deceleration came quicker than expected.
Under the CCP China’s per person growth has been lackluster over the full period 1950 - today relative to many countries. The numbers have improved, but context is always important.
ROFL. Never have I seen a more skillful distortion of facts. China's GDP per capita was around $500 per person in 1950, just at subsistence level, whereas it is currently around $9500. Other than a few countries such as South Korea, there are no countries that have advanced so much in that period.
If they have fallen in ranking, that is only because a number of countries became independent after WW2, especially in Europe.
Between 1949 and 1978 they did massively screw up economically while experiencing a population boom, which obviously led to GDP per capita numbers to collapse. On the other hand, since 1978 they've experienced probably the biggest economic boom in human history.
After Mao's death the government was pragmatic enough to realise that if they did not kick start the economy the regime would collapse (as it did in the USSR), and they rightly concluded that socialist economic management does not work.
Beyond that, it's difficult to compare with South Korea (since someone else mentioned that country) just due to the population difference.
Not really. They grew at an average of 6% over Mao’s reign too. The economic progress made was very substantial. In 1948 China was an impoverished, colonised and war-wrecked country with a large proportion of drug addicts. 90% of people were illiterate. By the 60’s it was a major power making large machinery, ships, weapons etc.
In 1950 China Per capita GDP was 612$ where Ethiopia was $277.00 thus it was well past subsistence levels. Critically as I said this was post civil war which should have allowed for rapid growth in the next few years.
That dataset only has 52 countries for 1950. Their 2010 data has 219 countries. So "rank" isn't a very good way to analyze China's GDP growth over time.
A better way to look at that same data is that Chinese GDP per capita went from being 6% of the American value in 1950, to 16% of the American value in 2010. Relative to American growth, China has grown about 2.5x as much.
Seems like a better benchmark would be South Korea which also ended a civil war in 1953. It also had some rather unpleasant political upheaval and still had better Per capita GDP growth.
Alternatively, Taiwan makes an interesting case study as it’s the other side of that civil war and had much better Per capita growth while starting slightly higher.
The Middle East oil states had some truly ridiculous growth starting around 1950. South Korea ‘wins’ over a rather specific time period via sustained growth, but it’s growth rate is not that unusual when you start looking at industrialization and post war recovery.
While I don't dispute that South Korea had amazing growth, was it really faster than "every" other country? How does it compare to Japan? Or Australia?
Japan was a developed country with one of the strongest economy in the world before WWII. They showed a crazy rate of economical growth right after WWII, but I think it was more of a recovery rather than development.
Mostly faster than Japan or Australia, although the crown for highest GDP growth in a single year goes to Rwanda for growing 35% in 1995 after shrinking by 50% the year before.
And ~1400 China used to represent 30% of the world economy. They are now only at 18%.
More seriously, every indicators points to a general improvement. In term of economy, China went from representing 4% of the world economy to the 18% mentioned previously.
On a more "individual quality of life" side of things, life expectancy went from 45 years in 1950 to 65 at the end of Mao Zedong era (1975) to 76 years today.
> PS: Of note the 1950’s GDP was after a long civil war.
That's a bit of an understatement... China basically spent over a century in turmoil, starting with the First Opium War then the Second, various revolts, the Boxers Rebellion, the 2 sino-japanese wars (with the second far from a pretty story...) and in the end, a civil war (and that's a very incomplete list). This period is remembered as the Century of Humiliation.
Basically China is regaining its natural place in the world order.
The percentile rank of China's GDP per capita was 13.7 among listed countries in 1950. [0] As of recently it's 44.5. [1] You have to standardize the information to make a meaningful comparison, since there are more countries nowadays.
The poster had written CPP when I replied to them. The rest of their comment (i.e. looking at ranking of GDP per capita) was as poorly thought out as their spelling of China’s ruling party.
A chinese person does not age faster. The chinese people are aging faster because they have less youth than is needed to pay for the social support for the generations approaching retirement. In response the 1.5 child policy was dropped around 2016, but birth rates didn't pick up as much as expected because of high cost of raising children.
The 1 child policy is leaving China with a low birthrate and hence an increasing smaller population of young people. The problem is further compounded when Mao encouraged Chinese people to have as many children as possible, which lead to ~6 childbirths per women in the 1960's.
This means that, at some point, there will be too many old people to be supported by too little young people. Japan is facing similar population issue for example.
Now, with the population index slowly inverting, China is running out of time to grow rich before it grows old. Otherwise, its social infrastructure will at some point become overburdened by old people who require care/safety net and not enough young people to to provide that care/safety net (either directly as children taking their aging parents or indirectly by paying taxes).
Also, China needs to figure out how it can overcome the middle income trap. Otherwise, its growth potential is severely limited, and could be more fuel being added to the rapidly aging population problem.
33% of the PRC's population will be over 65 years old in 2050. The PRC has been below the replacement birthrate (2.1 children per woman) since 1991. There is an economic reckoning coming from the seismic demographic shift. No other country in recorded history has aged so fast at such a scale.
I remember seeing an article from the WSJ stating the need to analyze energy input: coal, electric, oil, etc... to really correlate the Chinese economic growth published by the communist government. So, 6% official growth number should be taken with a grain of salt.
1) What does this mean for Xi's leadership and the CCP? Will this threaten their power?
No, only had you experienced the level and depth of China's indoctrination, can you understand how profoundly it affects the people, I still recall now and then the red songs I was taught and sang. Your whole world view is shaped by the regime to ensure their best interest, you think in their ways even if you are a rebel.
BTW they now teach "politics" in primary schools. The Youth are extremely patriotic and loyal to the party, they are impatient to even let you start your different opinions.
There will be discontent, but the power and reach of the tools the party has built is simply unprecedented in human history.
4) How will this effect China's middle class?
If the condo market collapses, most of them probably will go bankrupt and be in huge debts for a long time, being taught bubble economics the hard way, but the market probably can bounce back since it's CCP monopoly. Worst case senario the party can print money nonstop to keep the prices from crashing.
Being an economic powerhouse does not make you exempt from cause and effect. You can print your way out of a mid-level problem, trying to print your way out of an actual crisis is just going to accelerate and deepen that crisis.
More of the kind of behavior that got you into some problem is usually not the way to get out. Hyperinflation could hit the US, China or the Eurozone in a very hard way. If you do it gradually you may get away with it, do it too quickly and the whole thing will take on a momentum all its own. A bit like pushing a ball of snow down hill. For a while it seems like you are in control and then suddenly you realize you are no longer in control. By then it will be too late to stop it. I was on the fence in 2008. Despite having money in one of the Dutch banks that was hard hit by the sub-prime repackaging I was all for letting them go bust. Instead the state stepped in and propped up the bank. This meant that everybody ended up paying for that and the execs walked.
Hard to make the call on what was the best solution there, it is very well possible that this was the optimum outcome but it set the stage for a repeat, the beginnings of which we are already witnessing today.
Hyperinflation is great for those with debts. For everybody else: not so much. Savings, pensions all end up being worthless overnight essentially anything with future value and without an asset to back it turns to dust overnight.
This happened in Poland a while ago. Everybody with debts in old Zloty such as mortgages and so on was ecstatic, they could pay off their mortgage with three months work after the crash. Everybody else lost their life's work.
Those with property ended up neutral.
Banks learned their lesson: they pegged new mortgages to the Mark initially and later to the Euro, but people still got paid in Zloty...
With the social credit system if you can't pay your debts you become a 2nd class citizen. If there is a more serious downturn in China the social credit system will tear the county apart.
> BTW they now teach "politics" in primary schools. The Youth are extremely patriotic and loyal to the party, they are impatient to even let you start your different opinions.
Are they "patriotic" enough to report family members to the regime as political dissenters? If so, China is really in a bad spot as that is reminiscent of Nazi Germany. At least we would have a pseudo-ironic name for the program ("Xitler Youth")
China has no freedom of speech, the press, religion, or assembly. There is no real comparison of the indoctrination of the people of China to the US to be made. The systems are completely different as to be unrecognizable from one another.
> There is no real comparison of the indoctrination of the people of China to the US to be made. The systems are completely different as to be unrecognizable from one another.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. It's true, the two systems are significantly different, but I don't think that rules out that Americans are subject to a form of indoctrination. Look at the stranglehold the two parties have on the electoral system in the US. Just as one example, what happened to Bernie Sanders in the last election barely raised an eyebrow. If you listen to Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast for several weeks on either side of the last election (particularly after), I'd say it's pretty hard to make a case that the system isn't rigged to a fairly large degree, but how many people are actually aware of this?
I don't know if indoctrination is the perfect word for it, but constantly singing the praises of the system of democracy, while realistically the only alternatives people get have to go through a very thorough pre-screening for "suitability", and almost no one ever asks what the hell is really going on here, seems like a relative of some sort to indoctrination.
A reality tv show political outsider was able to become president through the Republican primary system.
Superdelegates in the Democratic primary are the following:
1. Elected members of the DNC
2. Democratic governors
3. Democratic members of Congress
4. Former Democratic Presidents, Vice Presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC Chairs.
The majority of them are elected officials currently holding office. The rest are formerly elected officials, and a minority. It's called an indirect election. That is not 'rigging'. The closest thing to rigging here would be category 4.
> A reality tv show political outsider was able to become president through the Republican primary system.
That this is even possible is as much a criticism of the process as it is a compliment.
Honest question: if you were designing a brand new system to elect the leader of the US, how likely do you expect it would be for someone of his calibre to be the last person standing?
> 1. Elected members of the DNC 2. Democratic governors 3. Democratic members of Congress 4. Former Democratic Presidents, Vice Presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC Chairs. The majority of them are elected officials currently holding office. The rest are formerly elected officials, and a minority.
Was this structure designed by the founding fathers? What percentage of Americans would you say really understand that a small group of undemocratically unelected people like this has the ability to directly block undesirable (to whom we don't really know) candidates from making it to the election? How many people do you think approve of this structure.
> That is not 'rigging'.
For certain definitions of rigged, of course. If the actual nature of this system was clearly explained to the American people, do you think most people would agree with you?
>Was this structure designed by the founding fathers?
No, this is a primary, as in, it is how the democratic party elects its own representative to run for president.
>What percentage of Americans would you say really understand that a small group of undemocratically unelected people like this has the ability to directly block undesirable (to whom we don't really know) candidates from making it to the election?
In 2016, 20 of 716 were in category 4, i.e., those who aren't currently holding office as a result of having been voted in. The rest are currently holding an office for which they were voted in. In other words, democratically elected.
Superdelegates and how they function is common knowledge for anyone following or participating in the primary. It's heavily covered and talked about every presidential election cycle.
>How many people do you think approve of this structure.
According to a poll run by Rasmussen in 2016, likely democratic voters approved of it at a rate of 30%.
>For certain definitions of rigged, of course. If the actual nature of this system was clearly explained to the American people, do you think most people would agree with you?
Americans understand very well how the election system works. 'Rigged' implies deception or fraudulence.
> In 2016, 20 of 716 were in category 4, i.e., those who aren't currently holding office as a result of having been voted in. The rest are currently holding an office for which they were voted in. In other words, democratically elected.
That's actually a pretty convincing argument, I think I'll have to concede victory.
Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it. It's my strong impression that this is not true in China; that it's a de facto if not de jure crime for media personalities to say things like "the Communist Party has rigged the system to a fairly large degree" or "Xi Jinping Thought seems kinda dumb and I'd like to read the alternatives".
> Even if everything you're saying is true, the important point is that you and I and Dan Carlin are free to go around saying it.
I'm not so sure about that either. I'd be surprised if the average Chinese person wasn't fairly well aware that they live in a censored world, and that a government that does that might also bend the truth a bit on the evening news. The average American on the other hand, and even the above average judging by most forums I frequent, seem to be under the impression that the US is truly the land of the free, the home of the brave, with a completely free press (not unlike the completely free electoral system), and that what they see and hear in the news is generally trustworthy and comprehensive.
Chinese people may not know the truth, but I'm pretty sure they know it's being hidden from them. People in the West, defenders of the free world, who not only seem unable to see the various pink elephants that are right in front of their eyes, but will attack and condemn anyone who points them out, worry me a lot more than the indoctrinated in plain sight Chinese.
American newspapers regularly publish state secrets, write about how the people in power are fools, and generally go out of their way to make life more difficult for politicians. That doesn't mean the press says everything true and nothing false, but it's very hard for me to understand how you could look at the situation and suspect the government has some secret censorship power.
It's far from uncommon for a reporter to explicitly say "by the way, the government told me not to disclose this information but I'm gonna do it anyway".
You seem to think in terms of censorship being a binary. Now that I point it out you won't of course, but what about when you (and my downvoters) wake up tomorrow?
No, I’m very willing to bite that bullet. Censorship is indeed a binary. There’s a fundamental and important difference between a system where the government has soft power to encourage stories it likes, and a system where newspapers must not print anything the government doesn’t want them to.
It is certainly true that they're not identical, but my point is that the state in America just maybe might exert some effort in the pursuit of generating an average mindset of ~"all is well with our governance, no need for concern, go about your day". Despite no shortage of fundamental issues in the US (and the west in general), any suggestion that there might be some issues with the current form of the political system itself is typically met with strong resistance. Surely basic human nature plays a part in this, but from reading the way in which the news is presented (the way events are described, which parts are included and repeated, which parts are downplayed or not even shown), I suspect there is some level of persuasion going on. How one couldn't notice this is beyond me, but I seem to be the outlier so perhaps the problem is on my end.
The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same. There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.
What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not. If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.
> The problem is that you're equating things that aren't the same.
Actually, I'm not.
If two countries both engage in indoctrination, in different forms and to different degrees, pointing out that one is different, or does it to a lesser degree, is not a proof that they do not do it in the first place.
> There's no way to deny that the American government thinks it's great, and puts in effort to convince people that it's great. That's the explicit goal of e.g. civics education.
I feel like you're implicitly suggesting that's all they do.
> What the American government doesn't do is require citizens to believe it's great, or forbid them from saying it's not.
That isn't a prerequisite for indoctrination, and only a prerequisite for certain kinds of censorship.
> If you get on a soapbox and talk about how the system was rigged against Bernie Sanders, a lot of Americans will think you're being silly, but none of them will think that you should be arrested for subversion.
Of course. But indoctrination and censorship can take many forms, and can be very hard to spot when done well. It also helps if the private sector engages in it so the government doesn't have to.
No no no, in which American city does the condo prices wthin it's urban area are no less than 1 million dollars? In Beijing you have it, it's a city full of (multi) million-dollar-property owners, and the majority of them love the CCP dearly for a reason.
Most American cities have condos available for less than 1m dollars. In fact, pretty much all of them do. In fact, pretty much only in certain areas of NYC, SF, Boston and LA are the median condo prices above 1m. In Chicago, the 3rd largest city in the US, condo prices are like 400k-600k for a 30th floor lakeview 2br in a nice neighborhood.
The indoctrination and politics being taught. Every day children in school stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag and there are constant stories of children being abused for not abiding by it. We're told we're "not being American" if we challenge the official narrative.
The fact that you're being downvoted is just more evidence, people hate being told they're just as indoctrinated into propaganda as China is, but they're just as indoctrinated into their own version.
1. Nothing. No. The CCP retains power without challenge under far more volatile conditions. Xi is the head of the CCP and he is not about to let go.
2. No. Nothing cements the future.
3. Nothing. Their growth is not China's growth.
4. It will continue to grow.
5. No. This "slowdown" has nothing to do with expats. Financial tools being taxed, has curbed Chinese investment outside of China. Anchor babies will continue to be popular.
This announcement, means very little in the long term, imo.
1) It's not great, however it's not Xi's main point, wealth was Deng Xoaping's promise to China, respect is Xi's promise. Xi is actively expending wealth in trade for respect (military, belt and road, space program, etc.). This was foundational in Xi's being chosen as leader, he cut his chops preparing Beijing for the olympics 2008 international show -- a respect event, not an economic one.
2) No. USA is the leading economy not because of economy but because of dollar hegemony, which insulates it from shocks that the RMB is subjected to. If belt-and-road nations start using RMB as reserve currency (and non-swift banking systems), regardless of economic power, that would challenge USA as leading economy. This is being attempted, but not covered much, for example the sino-russian deal to trade oil and gold in RMB instead of using the OPEC petro-dollar.
3) India is a more socially volatile than China, considering regions like Kashmir and social discord like lower-castes. If India were the #2 or #1 it would suddenly have these situations magnified the way China's situations are scrutinized on the world stage, leading to more aggressive challenges. India currently gets a free pass on inequality and climate etc. because it's a 'democracy.' Vietnam doesn't have the framework to challenge either effectively.
4) Not super, but again not terrible. The main thing is income distribution, not GDP. It may mean less iphones but doesn't necessarily mean less Huaweis, inside the mainland a Huawei is only about 60% the price you see in USA and doesn't represent a major drop in quality of life.
5) This is more a function of capital control I feel. They are a long long way from panic-flight ala Venezuela. Expats at this point are more luxury expats. Lots of other asians immigrate into China for a better life. Regardless, the China diaspora is already huge, and largely welcome in every country the immigrate to.
India is in a slump of their own, and the recent government measures there including the effective suppression of the right of habeas corpus, the most fundamental of rights is severely unbecoming of a parliamentary democracy.
Your comment is vague but I guess you were talking about Kashmir issue.
Don't want to start a flamewar, I'll just say Kashmir issue is far more complex than you can imagine and talk of fundamental rights suppression is utterly nonsense. But let's not discuss it on HN.
In the context of this thread and topic, Kashmir doesn't play any significant role in India's economy or growth story. Secondly, the troubled area is quite a small part of Jammu Kashmir state.
Regardless of Kashmir, India's current slowdown appears to be unprecedented. My architect brother contends that the slump in real estate is worse than it was after Demonetization and 2008
I think you're talking about Kashmir. I wish you'd provide more context for what you just said. I think it'd be better to start a separate thread than to take this one off-topic.
> What does this mean for Xi's leadership and the CCP?
Few days of bad mood
> Will this threaten their power?
Who will threaten his power? Han Zheng is the last Jiang loyalist in party's higher tiers, he is under extreme pressure for his handling of HK now.
I bet Xi will come out of that even more powerful, by dumping blame on whomever may oppose him.
> Does this cement the US as the leading economy for the next quarter century?
Leading economy != leading country. The negative feedback on currency will just roll Chinese companies back few years in their market outlook. Companies that were previously aiming for selling to developed economies will thing of places like South Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and such.
> What does this mean for up and coming rivals, such as India and Vietnam?
Not much for India. India just like Russia doesn't really want joining the global economy, and the impediment comes from within.
For Vietnam... good times to come. And for whomever will be working as fixers, bringing Western companies there.
But there is a big BUT. The moment Vietnam will get up on the economic ladder, there is a certain chance US or somebody else will try to pull the same tariff hike on them.
> How will this effect China's middle class?
Chinese middle class largely works in service sector, and that depends near solely on internal demand.
> Will we see an increase in Chinese expats?
Sure, there is always a knee jerk reaction among Chinese rich to any new wave of doomsayers.
When I was living in Vancouver I met quite a few rich Chinese. One of whom was an owner of the 4th largest scrap metal company in China. He sold his business at an insane 60% discount, and ran to Canada the moment he read "Chinese steel bubble is about to pop" in an "esteemed Western publication" in 2010.
The last time I checked on him, he was still living a nice rentier life with 3 houses in Vancouver, but was super cringy about him selling so low, and trusting random rags for making a once in a lifetime decision.
Near same was the case with 3 factory owners. Two had electronic factories, and one did clothing. You can still argue about one with clothing business making a correct decision closing the shop, but for two electronics factory owner, the decision to close their businesses made zero sense.
I asked them separately why they exchanged life in Canada for untold millions to come. None was able to give an answer, saying simply they don't understand their own rationale back then.
To them, people of peasant background, life in the West looked as something near mythical. They grew up thinking that "getting to the West" was something like a once in a lifetime chance, something what exceeds just anything on the list of ones personal achievements. To such people, parting with a few million buck a year business for a house in Vancouver and steady life genuinely looks like a good deal.
The new generation of entrepreneurs of course don't hold the West in such esteem, and some actually thing of it with some degree of contempt.
For those rich guys, the decision to sell and leave often has less to do about profit than fear of becoming a fall guy for the CPC’s latest corruption campaign (and let’s face it, they all have plenty of dirt). They all have plenty of dirty. “Retiring” to Vancouver is an easy way out, and might even be encouraged by the local party (e.g. “you should sell your metal scrap business to my brother at a 60% discount and then get out of town...”).
The new generation of entrepreneurs is a lot more guanxi secure than the one that organically grew up in the 80s. They often are or have friends related to those in power, so we won’t see another transition until Xi passes the baton.
I wonder where did you get such impression. What is the age of you "new generation of entrepreneurs" in question?
People in their thirties and forties make by far the largest cohort of entrepreneurs I know who can support the claim of them making their businesses from scratch, and not being part of state economy machine.
Notably, I knew DJI when they still were a "garage company," along with half of "Shanzhai" crowd.
On other hand, just anybody who somehow got $1m+ out of nowhere in China in nineties would've been a man "from the system." The few ways somebody made such money in China back then were: 1. land auction fraud, 2. privatisation auction fraud, 3. embezzlement from funds of the state or state company, 4. being a relative of somebody who did anything of above.
For the last point of people who got rich during nineties by embezzlement, here's a relatively prominent case: Vancouver's ex mayor's ex girlfriend's mother. She was alleged embezzled 350 million rmb yuan which was supposed to be the compensation for factory workers[1]. When many of the state owned factories became privatized during nineties, many many workers lost their jobs and they needed those compensations desperately. (There's a quite good movie depicting the lives of those people called the Piano in a Factory[2]). Anyway my point is not all people who fled mainland China are freedom fighters.
Insane 60% discount doesn't sound so insane when you are getting life in a country where you can't have your assets seized by the government and be put in jail at a moments notice. Your kids will have great schools and live in a pollution free beautiful place with good future prospects and a Chinese friendly environment. Sure he could have gotten more, but the downside is much worse.
People here are very dismissive of 1, but IMO they are being short sighted. Dictatorships are brittle, their power is extremely secure, up until it isn't. When the communist party rule does end, I think it will happen quicker than people think and catch a lot of people by surprise.
Not willing to stick my neck out with a prediction though.
For 2), I think the answer is yes. Chinas rapid transition from a low to a middle income country was remarkable, but I think the zeitgeist got a bit too excited about it (just as they did with Japan 30 years ago). I don't see any contenders to US economic power in the near future - China will be competing with India, not the US.
Given the trajectory of most developing economies away from industrial growth and towards service growth, is this really so bad? Wouldn't we expect industrial output to peak and decline over time?
You couldn't fault a layperson for thinking this means that they have plateaued, or industry is in decline. But it's not saying either of those.
This is just a very tortured way to say that we are reaching the other end of an S-curve. An S-curve that any rational person would assume was coming eventually.
I did piece it together from context but it’s a bad headline. It doesn’t even say growth slowed. It says China slowed, and growth was low. It’s just grammatically bad, and probably deliberately misleading.
Well, unless you see the GDP as your location, the growth in GDP as speed, and the change in growth in GDP as acceleration.
That would even make sense, just like installed power generation capacity could be seen as megawatt (a rate measure) but really it's not a rate measure when you're looking at the prosperity of a state. Flat installed power capacity is a stagnant economy. Likewise, flat GDP would be a stagnant economy. Hence "slowdown" is correct since that is analogous to second derivative negative. That's why we have the word "recession" or the phrase "shrinking economy" to talk about negative first derivative.
If they'd stop producing so much cheap, ephemeral crap I'd really like that. Stop wasting the planet's resources guys and just build stuff that works properly.
As seen on amazon.co.uk: "1-48 of over 70,000 results for "iphone case""
China's economic slowdown has been a long time coming, the relevance of this slowdown to the trade war is not necessarily as a consequence of it but more of a fortuitous opportunity for the US to negotiate freer trade in China. The trade war has an economic impact on China but there is a lot more behind their problems.
Who knows what the Chinese end game really is? I'm not a political analyst, just like I would have no idea who droned the Saudi oil fields (maybe Trump did). WTF--we only know what we're told.
However, based on the fact that the Chinese government mistreats the shit out of millions of their citizens--I'm delighted to pay more for a phone or a TV or whateve; just based on the possibility that they will become overtly aggressive in the future (and drawing similarities to the US prision system does not negate my point).
Of course, this is just my point of view, and it is colored by the litterly hundreds of thousands of battles I've had in my lifetime in cars. The fact is; if it looks like someone is out to fuck you... they usually are.
And all they need to do to return to some semblance of their former trajectory is agree to stop stealing our IP, stop their currency manipulation, and stop sending us a bunch of fentanyl. A no brainer really.
6% growth would be the envy of many countries. For comparison, the last time the US did that was 1984, after back-to-back recessions and a flood of deficit-financed defense spending:
https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543