Naval divers working to clear fishing nets from the HMAS Toowoomba's propellers were forced to exit the water when a Chinese warship began operating its hull-mounted sonar, in an incident labelled "unsafe and unprofessional".
I think he came off as a bit of a jerk. And I think he isn’t giving Xi quite enough credit. But they aren’t wrong, and they aren’t defending Xi. Xi like trump is a culmination of a toxic culture of concentrated power and ignorance.
Tiananmen square happened in 89. Long before Xi came to power. China has practiced oppression on it’s own people for decades. Much like every country that took their cues from leninism. Many Chinese tolerated it because despite their leadership things were improving at large. Much like how Americans generally ignore the plight of the poor, minorities, and immigrants. As long as they have their bread and circuses.
Problem is China has been projecting their oppression for some time now under Xi and saber rattling like western powers often get a pass on. But decades of bad decisions are coming home to roost. And their growth is finally slowing. That’s more responsible for changes in attitude than anything Xi in particular has done.
On the Chinese political scale, Xi would be seen as right-moderate. His rhetoric is in line with a good chunk of Chinese citizens, but ostracizes Shanghai and some of the southeastern coastal elite.
Famously, Xi Jinping said “houses should be for living, not for speculation.”
The notion that China’s growth is slowing is true, but I think it lacks context. For the past decade or so, Chinese economic growth has been buoyed by a burgeoning construction sector. With changes to economic policy a few years back, that sector is seeing contraction and regressing back to replacement rate. Real estate shrank from nearly 30% of GDP to less than 20%. Yet, China is still reporting GDP growth in excess of 5% this year. Eventually the real estate industry will plateau, but nobody really knows where or when.
Famously, Xi Jinping said “houses should be for living, not for speculation.”
And in that he’s 100% right. And you’re also correct about the context. Belt an road is a post rebranding of wasteful infrastructure spending to prop up the countries economics. Not that governments shouldn’t spend on infrastructure. But the way China has been doing it has been a method to prop up a very unstable house of cards. Literally just throwing around money all over the place with very little return. In the end, just making things worse really.
IIRC China denominates their loans in USD because they have a massive USD surplus due to the US-China trade imbalance. It’s aligned with China’s policy today of rapidly shrinking US Treasury holdings.
Which is only going to cause them more problems long run. In a state capitalist society, or any other capitalist society for that matter. Worthless debt is worthless. Capitalism is unsustainable. But if it was sustainable it would require healthy trading partners. So they’re really shooting themselves in the foot on that front. And none of the giant fancy ghost stations or high speed rail lines built out to the rural parts of China. The party has largely ignored and failed to benefit for most it’s existence is going to change that. Especially with the population disparity.
If they were truly socialist/communist, at this point they’d be pretty secure. Instead of slowly heading for an inevitable crash. It isn’t just them though. The west is getting ready to crash again soon. And we can’t be bothered to mitigate it.
In the first half of the year, the nationwide per capita disposable income of residents was 19,672 yuan, a nominal growth of 6.5 percent over the same period last year, and a real growth of 5.8 percent after deducting price factors. In terms of urban and rural areas, the per capita disposable income of urban households was 26,357 yuan, a growth of 5.4 percent (unless otherwise specified below, it was a year-on-year nominal growth), and the real growth was 4.7 percent after deducting price factors; the per capita disposable income of rural households was 10,551 yuan, a growth of 7.8 percent. After deducting price factors, the real growth was 7.2 percent.
I wasn’t talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it’s not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don’t, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.
I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California’s or London’s by… I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.
China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.
I think he came off as a bit of a jerk. And I think he isn’t giving Xi quite enough credit. But they aren’t wrong, and they aren’t defending Xi. Xi like trump is a culmination of a toxic culture of concentrated power and ignorance.
Tiananmen square happened in 89. Long before Xi came to power. China has practiced oppression on it’s own people for decades. Much like every country that took their cues from leninism. Many Chinese tolerated it because despite their leadership things were improving at large. Much like how Americans generally ignore the plight of the poor, minorities, and immigrants. As long as they have their bread and circuses.
Problem is China has been projecting their oppression for some time now under Xi and saber rattling like western powers often get a pass on. But decades of bad decisions are coming home to roost. And their growth is finally slowing. That’s more responsible for changes in attitude than anything Xi in particular has done.
On the Chinese political scale, Xi would be seen as right-moderate. His rhetoric is in line with a good chunk of Chinese citizens, but ostracizes Shanghai and some of the southeastern coastal elite.
Famously, Xi Jinping said “houses should be for living, not for speculation.”
The notion that China’s growth is slowing is true, but I think it lacks context. For the past decade or so, Chinese economic growth has been buoyed by a burgeoning construction sector. With changes to economic policy a few years back, that sector is seeing contraction and regressing back to replacement rate. Real estate shrank from nearly 30% of GDP to less than 20%. Yet, China is still reporting GDP growth in excess of 5% this year. Eventually the real estate industry will plateau, but nobody really knows where or when.
And in that he’s 100% right. And you’re also correct about the context. Belt an road is a post rebranding of wasteful infrastructure spending to prop up the countries economics. Not that governments shouldn’t spend on infrastructure. But the way China has been doing it has been a method to prop up a very unstable house of cards. Literally just throwing around money all over the place with very little return. In the end, just making things worse really.
IIRC China denominates their loans in USD because they have a massive USD surplus due to the US-China trade imbalance. It’s aligned with China’s policy today of rapidly shrinking US Treasury holdings.
Which is only going to cause them more problems long run. In a state capitalist society, or any other capitalist society for that matter. Worthless debt is worthless. Capitalism is unsustainable. But if it was sustainable it would require healthy trading partners. So they’re really shooting themselves in the foot on that front. And none of the giant fancy ghost stations or high speed rail lines built out to the rural parts of China. The party has largely ignored and failed to benefit for most it’s existence is going to change that. Especially with the population disparity.
If they were truly socialist/communist, at this point they’d be pretty secure. Instead of slowly heading for an inevitable crash. It isn’t just them though. The west is getting ready to crash again soon. And we can’t be bothered to mitigate it.
I mean, isn’t there pretty substantial evidence that those “ghost cities” are just speculative development that, most of the time, is productive?
See: https://youtu.be/SR4EYQ6JFUI?si=brfvaXCezqVI0hiL
The party’s approach to dealing with the marginalized rural population is to just urbanize as many people as possible. That’s also why they speculatively build out housing. In 2023, at least, rural people are getting more disposable income growth than urban ones:
I wasn’t talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren’t necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it’s not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don’t, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.
I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California’s or London’s by… I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.
China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.