PRC Economy - New Reflections : Dec 15 2011

[wong]

Dude, the successors of the Indus Valley Civilization are running this forum

I think a discussion of whether modern India is the successor to the IVC is outside the scope of a thread for the PRC Economy. It is my understanding that modern India claims the IVC, no doubt.

[sudarshan]

Dude, the successors of the Indus Valley Civilization are running this forum

I think a discussion of whether modern India is the successor to the IVC is outside the scope of a thread for the PRC Economy. It is my understanding that modern India claims the IVC, no doubt.

Well, it's a much more legitimate "claim" than you guys claiming Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the entire South "China" Sea, just because you guys managed to subjugate some part of these territories (excluding the sea, of course) for a few years, however many centuries ago. Not to mention your pretensions of having invented Buddhism....

[Suraj]

You're comparing two periods that are 4500 years apart by comparing IVC to the Ming dynasty. The civilization that built stuff in 14th century India is still very much around; even that culture itself has been preserved and handed down meticulously, if you visit Hindu temples and follow their narratives and texts. That's different from China, which ripped up its connection to its past in the 1960s. Even the remnants of those who invaded us then are around and reside to our west, and beseechingly call you their taller than the tallest mountain and deeper than the deepest ocean friends.

[wong]

Hmm . Here I was thinking after watching the movie "The Last Emperor" that Pu Yi was actually a Manchu! And a lot of the B grade Kung Fu movies are about Shaolin defending the Cantonese from the "Evil" Manchus. So what exactly did the "folks who built the Great Wall" do until the the mid 90s? Be slaves under the hated "Manchu Barbarians", that the great wall was supposed to stop in the first place ?

The Manchu language is basically extinct. All the remaining Manchus sinicized. There is a recent trend in China of claiming Manchu heritage (like people in the US like to claim Cherokee blood or whatever), but the people that built the Great Wall are still very much around. That's indisputable.

[wong]

your pretensions of having invented Buddhism....

This is news to me... I have known since I was a small child Buddhism came from India. I don't think this statement is true, but there are crazy people everywhere so it's possible.

[Theo_Fidel]

Leave it to Vina to get the Panda's into a frothy sweat.

BTW the people who built the big wall (why do we call it great by the way, just because the Panda's do?) were mostly not around to talk about it even back then. Estimates are that 30 million died building it. A cursory read shows that there were at least 6 major invasions that went right through.

[vina]

The Manchu language is basically extinct. All the remaining Manchus sinicized. There is a recent trend in China of claiming Manchu heritage (like people in the US like to claim Cherokee blood or whatever), but the people that built the Great Wall are still very much around. That's indisputable.

I don't deny that. What it really means is common sense. Cultures and people change over time and influence and are in turn influenced by others. To say that the present day chinese are the ones who built the great wall might be true only genetically (and that too partly), but as a people, are vastly different. A person and society are after all more than just the genes they carry!

The Manchus sinicizing is exactly what happened in India as well, which has a history of assimilating everyone who lands up on this land (either born here or comes here).

Now to talk about the "Chinese Race' (as per the CPC progaganda) and the Chinese blowhards farting around on the internet on that is simply rubbish. There is no such thing and really all the Chinese are a different ethnicity from say the Manchus and Mongols and Koreans. The term "Chinese Race" is just as idiotic and misleading as 'Indian Race'.

[Advait]

wong, you were being a pretty good contributor but now sound like a Paki troll.

Anyway, all this talk of my culture is better goes down the drain when Chinese is west are so eager to take on western names.

Besides, what great culture/contribution to humanity did Japan have before the 1850s. But see how they beat their more refined neighbors and are way ahead of them even today inspite of being the only country to have been nuked.

'Nuff said!

[ashi]

wong, you were being a pretty good contributor but now sound like a Paki troll.

Anyway, all this talk of my culture is better goes down the drain when Chinese is west are so eager to take on western names.

Besides, what great culture/contribution to humanity did Japan have before the 1850s. But see how they beat their more refined neighbors and are way ahead of them even today inspite of being the only country to have been nuked.

'Nuff said!

You probably don't know. Many Americans or Westerns who go to China to study or work have Chinese names too. US ambassadors to China also have Chinese names.

Not that I like the overseas Chinese to have an western names, but you overreact.

[paramu]

The Manchu language is basically extinct. All the remaining Manchus sinicized. There is a recent trend in China of claiming Manchu heritage (like people in the US like to claim Cherokee blood or whatever), but the people that built the Great Wall are still very much around. That's indisputable.

People who built pyramids are still there, people of mesoptamia are still there, but they no longer look or behave like the people who built those civilizations. What they built are now tourist spots or museums. The same can be said about China too, and the change happened in 1960s under CPC. What we say about India is that, the Indus-valley civilization, which is now being recognized as the Saraswati-river civilization was infact the original Vedic civilization that Indians still practice and consider as their identity. The cultural and civilizational continuity still remains.

[Singha]

the culture and religion are interlinked. since islam rejected anything that came before - egypt , mesopotamia and persian relics are just tourist attractions now. same for eastern and western roman empire and greek empire since christianity made sure to wipe out the old religions. christianity itself lost its earlier austere mooring in judaea and ethiopia and focussed on political and economic power in vatican now.

perhaps only in india and israel there are places 1000s of years old which are active sites of worship and veneration.... the civilizational continuity is there. ofcourse most israelis are ashkenazi now, the old sepherdic and mizrahi tribes must be fewer in number....in that sense India is even more tfta.

[ArmenT]

Interesting article from the BBC:
China: What happened to Mao's revolution?

[Hari Seldon]

perhaps only in india and israel there are places 1000s of years old which are active sites of worship and veneration.... the civilizational continuity is there. ofcourse most israelis are ashkenazi now, the old sepherdic and mizrahi tribes must be fewer in number....in that sense India is even more tfta.

Living history only goes back a 100 generations max before the dense fog of pre-history takes over and blankets everything everywhere. Everywhere except in India. Sui generis indeed.

[svinayak]

Escaping the dollar trap

[ashi]

Don't Believe the India Hype

But elections are taking place when the Indian economy has taken a sharp turn for the worse, in a climate of global economic crisis. This exposes the pathetic, do-nothing, zero-reform record of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government. More generally, it lays bare India's huge reform gaps and its brittle, decaying institutions. Finally, it deflates the "India Hype" peddled by smooth-talking, upper-caste politicians, ambassadors, businessmen, management consultants and indeed some academics.

A word about India Hype. One aspect of it is the thesis that India is forging a separate successful path to development, in contrast to the traditional comparative-advantage-based development of China and the other East Asian Tigers. At its extreme, this argument holds that India's growth engines are its high-end services, and now manufacturing sectors with their globalizing, world-beating companies.

This is a fundamental misdiagnosis. The vaunted successes in information technology-based services and in manufacturing niches are welcome. But they are a high-wage, capital- or skill-intensive drop in India's low-wage, unskilled, labor-abundant ocean. India's growth should be focused in the labor-intensive sectors, but it isn't.

Agriculture is stagnant, hobbled not just by very high external protection but also by crazy subsidies captured by comparatively rich farmers and middlemen, absence of property rights, terrible rural irrigation and infrastructure, and draconian domestic restrictions that fragment the internal market. Nontradable services sectors—where potential employment generation is huge—are also crippled by domestic restrictions. Backbone services sectors (such as banking, insurance and retail) suffer from external protection as well.

Last, and crucially, India's glaring development gap is in manufacturing, for all sorts of Union and state-level policies—on labor markets, infrastructure, power generation, subsidies, the public sector, repressed agriculture and services sectors, uncertain property rights, and remaining zones of protection against imports and inward investment—conspire to prevent labor-intensive industrial production. India needs its Industrial Revolution if it is to grow out of poverty. That means putting the impoverished in the countryside into (initially) low-wage work in mass manufacturing. That is what China and other parts of East Asia have done. But not India.

India Hype extends to "Chindia," the notion that India plays in the same league as China as an emerging superpower. This is pure myth. China plays in a league of its own; India, Brazil and Russia play in a far inferior league. China's economy is thrice the size of India's; its goods exports are 10 times bigger; it is even ahead of India in the world services trade; it spends about 10% of GDP on infrastructure compared to about 5% in India; and its carbon emissions—a sure indicator of industrialization—are about four times higher.

[chola]

What makes you feel the need to post an Indian economic story in a PRC Economy thread? Your feelings hurt?

There is no India hype in the corporate world. I haven't seen one discussion of wasted breath on India. The sales don't support it so there is no discussion.

Now there is definitely a China hype. We spend lots of time explaining to companies (and industries) that really they shouldn't even be thinking of China. But they do because everyone else is.

[rsingh]

[rsingh]

[Gus]

starf u c k s and pizza huh are the best.

[Suraj]

Don't Believe the India Hype

Are you aware the article is from May 2009 ? Why don't you entertain us by posting something from, say, the 1970s next ?

[shyam]

Drone quality is very very bad. Worse than Chinese fakes...

[ashi]

Don't Believe the India Hype

Are you aware the article is from May 2009 ? Why don't you entertain us by posting something from, say, the 1970s next ?

This article is more true now than then. India's problem is structural.

A recent article from German press.

India in Wonderland stress

"The progress was hype. The masses have had none of it "

[Suraj]

I agree. The Indian masses have had none of the benefits of economic development at all. Just like the Chinese masses haven't had any benefits from their development, right ?

[girish.r]

starf u c k s and pizza huh are the best.

yes.... some article i read on Nat Geo some time back, when it comes to the HYPE!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ld-travel/

[wong]

^^^^

Construction has broken ground in Shanghai for the real thing, so Disney must believe the HYPE.

http://en.shanghaidisneyresort.com.cn/en/

[ashi]

China's economic outlook brightens

Chinese industrial output grew at a slightly slower 9.6% annual rate, but it was nowhere near the decline in manufacturing shown in some recent surveys. And while retail sales growth also slowed slightly to 13.8%, the country's trade surplus grew unexpectedly, as the level of both exports and imports hit new records. That suggests recession conditions in much of Europe aren't jamming the brakes on Chinese factories.

While overall Chinese economic growth might still come in at the slowest pace in years, many economists now believe it will be near or at 8% for the year.

And some are expecting much stronger growth. Carl Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics, believes that retail spending is rising fast enough to bring growth close to 10% this year, given the 10.9% rise in retail sales so far this year after inflation.

The new global economy

"I think China's growth potential is underestimated and under appreciated by many people," said Weinberg. "Consumer spending in China generated 40% of GDP; only 5% comes from exports."

[ashi]

China Export Surprise: European Demand Up On Year

All told, China exports rose by more than 15 percent in May versus the same period last year, the General Administration of Customs said Sunday from Beijing. Exports beat market expectations, reportedly up by 15.3 percent to $181.1 billion last month compared with the 4.9 percent growth in April. Meanwhile, imports rose 12.7 percent year-over-year to $162.4 billion in May, better than the 0.3 percent increase in April’s import numbers.

China’s strategy of developing more value added goods and selling higher end products to the world has helped May beat a record in terms of values. Both exports and imports hit record high values per item, sending the trade surplus to $18.7 billion from the $18.4 billion registered in April.

[Suraj]

xposted from strat forum:

http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/ ... cracy.html

China is a kleptocracy of a scale never seen before in human history. This post aims to explain how this wave of theft is financed, what makes it sustainable and what will make it fail.

Here's something useful for those who want to learn how the Chinese economic system is financed and run.

[KLP Dubey]

A recent article from German press.

India in Wonderland stress

"The progress was hype. The masses have had none of it "

Sounds hollow coming from a country that 'PIGGY'backed on US handouts for 3 decades and now draining national wealth to feed other 'PIGS'.

Namaskar,

KLP Dubey

[Singha]

its still piggybacking under US defence umbrella and downsizing its own defence forces.

[amit]

xposted from strat forum:
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2012/ ... cracy.html

China is a kleptocracy of a scale never seen before in human history. This post aims to explain how this wave of theft is financed, what makes it sustainable and what will make it fail.

Here's something useful for those who want to learn how the Chinese economic system is financed and run.[/quote]

Suraj,

Thanks for the link.

Here's an interesting explanation for the high savings rate. I must say I never looked at in this way. However, it does seem to make sense:

The other key fuel for kleptocracy is a copious supply of domestic savings to loot. The reason Chinese savings levels are so high is the one-child policy.

In most developing countries the way that people save is they have multiple children hopefully to generate a gaggle of grandchildren all of whom are trained to respect their elders. Given most people did not live to old age if you did you became a treasured (and well cared for) family member.

This does not work in China. Longevity in China is increasing rapidly and the one-child policy results in a grandchild potentially having four grandparents to look after. The “four grandparent policy” means the elderly cannot expect to be looked after in old age. Four grandparents, one grand-kid makes abandoning the old-folk looks easy and near certain.

Nor can the elderly rely on a welfare state to look after them. There is no welfare state.

So the Chinese save. Unless they save they will starve in old age. This has driven savings levels sometimes north of fifty percent of GDP. Asian savings rates have been high through all the key industrializations (Japan, Korea, Singapore etc). However Chinese savings rates are over double other Asian savings rates – this is the highest savings rate in history and the main cause is the one-child policy.

PS: A_Gupta ji, thanks for the original link

[sha]

People here talked a lot about car sales in China and India not long time ago. Here comes some latest news.

Car sales drive Chinese growth
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001044997/en

Car sales in China rose 22.6 per cent year on year in May, according to figures released from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Those are hardly the kind of figures to give global stock markets the jitters, especially when compared with figures from India, where car sales rose only 2.8 per cent year on year in May.

[Theo_Fidel]

Hmmm! One little fly in the ointment. Surveys show that Household savings rate in China is only 18% of GDP. The rest comes from elsewhere, mostly from companies squeezing the wages of their workers. Companies have a 20% savings rate in China.

For instance Indian household savings rate is 22% far higher than the Chinese rate.

The bit about the negative real returns is staggering though. The system is set up to bankrupt the average citizen. And many have pointed out that this is what allows the companies to sell at a loss and stay profitable. The system allows them to spend 100 units making a widget, sell it for 95 inflation adjusted units and still remain above water.

[KLP Dubey]

Car sales in China rose 22.6 per cent year on year in May, according to figures released from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

If the common man in China is being exploited to the hilt in other ways, giving a car to the poor sod sure seems a cheap way to keep him quiet.....I am sure these would mostly be 100% cash transactions, no? Why let that messy little "credit" business come in the way of sustaining a 10% growth statistic ?

Good day,

KL

[wong]

NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/busin ... nted=print

"Manufacturers across China are investing in labor-saving equipment, reorganizing shop floor management and taking other measures to control labor costs, which have been rising steeply as the country grows in prosperity.

Here in southern China, a manufacturer of home saunas has installed a $25,000 computer-controlled drill that does the work of up to eight people. A garment company in Wenxi, in eastern China, is buying machinery to manufacture buttons more cheaply. And a printer in Wuhan, in central China, is fully automating paper cutting and plans further investments in printing and binding, so that workers will only be required to package the finished product."

[KLP Dubey]

NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/busin ... nted=print

You post here long time, but you no highlight impoltant things in these alticres. Flom the same piece:

Chinese officials have also urged the country’s state-owned banks to lend more to small and medium-size manufacturers, many of which are exporters. The country’s 70 financial institutions, all state controlled, have been lending heavily to state-owned enterprises; some are exporters, but many are engaged more in domestic activities like real estate development and infrastructure.

So now the "lending disease" will infect the PRC's small and medium sectors too ? Amazed you are presenting this as good news - seems more like a sign of new levels of desperation in Beijing.

Loans are widely issued at fairly low interest rates through a system that allocates credit based partly on the Five-Year Plan and other national policies, as opposed to who can pay the highest risk-adjusted interest rate.

Wondelfur! Bulls in a China shop!

China’s current Five-Year Plan calls for industrial wages to rise 13 percent a year through 2015, and some cities have been raising their minimum wages even faster.

All ships rising together, eh, masterminded by the CCP geniuses? Growth rate set at 10%, wage rise rate set at 13%....


Jai ram ji ki,
Kishen Lal

[paramu]

Kishen Lal ji, aap KLPD kar rahe ho...

[Singha]

crouching tiger hidden dragon actress is sueing a HK newspaper who alleged she was paid $110 m over a decade to sleep with Bo Xilai and his business associates.

[sha]

Mr. Theo_Fidel never give up a chance to cry for the rights of ordinary oppressed and explotited Chninese people. I have to say he is a very great guy.

One thing struck me most is that he cared more about the sufferings of the Chinese than that of the Indians. One example, he felt deelply sorry for the Shenzhen Foxconn sweatshop workers who earns 24,000 Rs/month but whole-heartedly happy for Indian Mumbai Metro workers who earn 3,000 Rs/month. Some Indians may took his words as ridiculous, but I hardly agree.

[Raja Bose]

crouching tiger hidden dragon actress is sueing a HK newspaper who alleged she was paid $110 m over a decade to sleep with Bo Xilai and his business associates.

Why is she suing? coz she was tricked into thinking it was to be done for free, for the glory of the party?