Even China’s population of 1.4 billion would not be enough to fill all the empty apartments littered across the country, a former official said on Saturday, in a rare public critique of the country’s crisis-hit property market.
China’s property sector, once the pillar of the economy, has slumped since 2021 when real estate giant China Evergrande Group (3333.HK) defaulted on its debt obligations following a clampdown on new borrowing.
Big-name developers such as Country Garden Holdings (2007.HK) continue to teeter close to default even to this day, keeping home-buyer sentiment depressed.
As of the end of August, the combined floor area of unsold homes stood at 648 million square metres (7 billion square feet), the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show.
That would be equal to 7.2 million homes, according to Reuters calculations, based on the average home size of 90 square metres.
The world is really lucky that China’s not doing that great at the moment. Not so long ago, China was winning the propaganda war internationally.
You don’t want authoritarianism to win the argument by out-performing democracies.
I agree. I don’t think we had or have anything to fear. The Chinese educational system is built around obedience, cultural homogeneity, and rote learning. Sure, there are fewer protests, and there is less crime, but also a SEVERE lack of innovation. I can count on one hand the number of innovations China has exported to the world in the last decade. Everything they build of note is based on stolen IP and figurative and literal slave labour. The world is finally clamping down on the former, and China’s social progression to a service-based economy is putting an end to the latter. Their comparative competitive advantages are eroding by the day.
I wouldn’t necessarily bet on this, authoritarian states are breeding grounds for corruption and that in turn fuels crime. I wouldn’t be surprised if China has a problem with criminality that the government, at least on a local level, not only turns a blind eye to but is complicit in.
I suspect a major reason for Putin’s most recent crimes was to prevent his people learning how much their neighbours are prospering.
Why doesn’t China count as a democracy? People vote and the votes get counted and decide who runs things.
Why doesn’t North Korea count as a democracy? People vote and the votes get counted and decide who runs things. /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China
Hmm, why isn’t the one-party state is considered a democracy? Truly baffling.
Why do you think voting for party is the only form of democracy?
Why don’t you?
why dont we want that if its outperforming democracies
Ah the old “ends justify the means” argument. I’ve seen this one before somewhere
“the means”, of course, being out-performing democracies
“the means” in this case would be authoritarian repression.
“The means” always has to be something bad for the “ends” to try and justify reaching for “the means”.
Can you give a briefer on how it’s outperforming democracies? I don’t mean to be confrontational, I really want to hear why you think that.
i dont have a briefer on how its outperforming democracies, im not the one that came up with that premise
Wait, what? But you said:
I’m missing something here
hyperreality said
i argued based on that premise
you can tell because of the use of the word “if” in this sentence
if that premise was nonsense from the start they probably shouldnt have run an argument off it
Ahh, right, thank you for clarifying. The way the thread is structured made it seem like you were the one claiming that even though you were bouncing off the other comment. I’ll need to be more careful.
Show me a single democracy anywhere in the world.
Alright I’ll bite, what makes the world’s declared democracies actually undemocratic in your mind?
Billionaires directly or indirectly buying elections, politicians, drafting policies, funding propaganda, regulatory capture, etc.
The democratic world doesn’t start and end with America
I live in Denmark. All liberal democracies are subject to the whims of billionaires.
Edit: oh wait, you’re Canadian. That’s fucking hilarious.
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Its a democracy when you’re in the global north, it’s autocracy when you’re in the global south.
I love how you’re getting downvoted, likely by people who feel a sense of enlightenment in that they can identify Chinese propaganda that has been pointed out to them as such but have no clue about propaganda originating from their own country or from a country theirs is allied with.
I live in Scandinavia. Please enlighten me about my country’s propaganda
CEPOS
Scandinavia is a country?
According to the Danes, definitely.
Ironically, founded to “stop the encroachment by the Germans” the Kalmar union first had a Pommeranian King, and then a Saxon one.