There’s also a major factor in China’s growth, which has mostly been overlooked, which is it’s ignorance towards it’s own climate.
It has basically raped the climate for cheap resources, but has put back almost nothing into it, which means that it cannot sustain it’s growth.
The cost of cleaning up China’s climate now is far beyond imagination, but if Chinese in many areas demand to return to clean water, healthy fish stocks, edible plant life and so forth, then China presently doesn’t have the money allocation for it and would have to reform quite radically to get there.
There is little hope for China’s “healthy” economy in the short term as much of its expansion was based upon foreign demand for products. Now that European and U.S. demand has dropped considerably and that the bond markets are so weak, there is a need for China’s interests to diverge into local market development. Living in Shanghai here it seems that there isn’t nearly the consumerism which everyone would expect of such a large, developed Chinese city. The fact is that compared to any other developed city I’ve ever lived in, Shanghai doesn’t seem the bustle of busy shoppers that I’m used to. There seems to have been a lot of anticipation that they would be here by now, but judging by my walking around, there are quite a few places which have opened, and then closed again pretty quickly.
I will say however that restaurants seem to be doing okay. Some of them are very busy indeed. The higher priced goods however don’t seem to be always doing that well.
I think China needs to allow it’s own currency to appreciate in order to build it’s home market. It might have been great that a few people were making money, building things for foreign markets, but I think that game plan needs to change, markets need to focus on other areas and other countries. There may be some wealthy people in China, but they aren’t driving the home economy as locals can’t afford the goods they make. As foreign markets are fading Chinese property markets will suffer and the local labour force will suffer to a degree. This is why I believe it may well be on the cards for China to start diverging away from the U.S. bond market, and begin strengthening it’s own RMB. This will possibly sink the U.S. in the short term, but may allow China to re-adjust and refocus its efforts at home.
I’m pretty new to these types of personal videos shot with a phone, so please forgive my shakiness. I filmed this one on one level of the Sun Moon Department Store in Xuhui District, near my home in Shanghai.
The Shopping centre is in a prime location, around one of the wealthy areas of Puxi, with a reasonably large foreign population nearby.
This video was shot on a working day, but even at the weekends, there is little action, other than in the restaurants at this department store.
The store is also home to the largest City Shop in Shanghai, which is popular, and sits above one Subway Line.
[quote=“Baas Babelaas”]I must say, sulavaca, I see that at plenty of malls in Xiamen, which is also reasonably affluent.
New malls being build and opened daily.[/quote]
I think there is still a lot of construction going on, but I also see a lot of shops around here closing. I think that the initial boom phase might be calming somewhat and we may be starting to see some competition beginning to shunt out the weaker areas.
slave labor, indentured service, no freedom of movement or expression: the usual totalitarian shit, coupled with aggressive, unfair trade practices and industrial espionage and IP theft on a grand scale.
I think it is an idiotic question. For most centuries in the past few millenia, excluding the 20th Century, China was the richest country. It is just returning to former positions.
Well if rich is an average income of 12,000 USD in the East Coast cities and 4,000 USD for the farmers…and that’s just the average, which is useless in a country like China.
I read somewhere about a year ago (can’t find the link) that per capita, China is half as rich as Ecuador. If true, (and I’ll keep searching) China has a long way to go. Couple it with the awful environmental damage I’ve heard of and China doesn’t seem that rich even if proportionally, it’s the second-biggest economy on the planet.
[quote=“Taiwanlight Zone”]I read somewhere about a year ago (can’t find the link) that per capita, China is half as rich as Ecuador. If true, (and I’ll keep searching) China has a long way to go. Couple it with the awful environmental damage I’ve heard of and China doesn’t seem that rich even if proportionally, it’s the second-biggest economy on the planet.
China is a vast country of 1.3 billion people, it’s hard to compare it directly to any other countries except perhaps India or the US or the old Soviet Union.
It is more appropriate to consider China as a collection of provinces and regions, and cities versus countryside. Previously you could say West vs East but cities in Sichuan and central China are developing at a good rate now.
They use a tiering system of their cities in China and it’s useful to get an idea of the relative size and economic development. Looking at income figures for China, the maximum is Tianjin’s average which is 13,000 USD/yr and in the countryside that would drop to 2,500 USD/yr.
The averages are still not much use though considering the gulf between migrants, working class, middle class and businessmen & government officials. There is massive income disparity combined with massive populations,
An official city in China like Chongqing, supposedly the largest in the world with pop. 30 million, can actually be a whole county (very much like the slight of hand that now puts the central mountain range in Taichung City).
Finally one must understand that many people are not counted in statistics according to the Huji, being migrants
it’s pretty confusing and without an understanding of how the statistics are generated and how they relate to each other they really are of not much use.
All we can say there is not one China but multiple Chinas.
I would say that China has started to turn towards liberalism in its “special areas” of business. The government however is still very much present in China’s affairs. They have evened out the political differences between China and the west however and now compete on a more even platform. The west has become more socialist and oppressive whereas China has gone the other way and they have more or less met in the middle. Even in terms of human rights, they can now be criticised more equally too, which has meant that workers are more likely to vote with their feet.
The have not more or less ‘met in the middle’, that’s a ridiculous characterization. China does not have a functioning justice system. It spends more on it’s internal security apparatus than any other department. It still censors news very rigorously. It is a one party state. It disappears people to this day, puts people into forced labour camps or can keep people under house arrest for decades. They sell executed prisoners organs without consent. It does not permit freedom of religion or expression. Their leadership are almost all billionaires due to the vast corruption at the top.