Bharat Rakshak

heech

Thank you, heech. That's an excellent post! I'm curious about the topic of the breakdown in social norms over the past four decades in the mainland. Would that imply that you might more implicitly trust a Taiwanese businessman than you would a Chinese one from the mainland, because the former didn'...

heech

After having done business both in China and overseas, I have a better appreciation now of "why" and "how" guanxi is critically important. There are three primary contributing factors: - the first is the dominance of rule of man over the rule of law. The bureaucratic system in Ch...

heech

India should aim to be like Germany, Canada, and Scandinavia? By the same token, I'd like my kids to be like Bill Gates' kids. Whatever they're doing, my kids should do. But reality doesn't exactly work like that. chola's certainly right that development has to be a process. Your kids will only beco...

heech

I think anyone that does business (especially related to manufacturing) in China actively feels the advantages of its infrastructure. I can ship a small package (say, 2 kg) door-to-door to any one of 800 million people (all of central + coastal China), and know it will arrive within 2-3 days for aro...

heech

Well, it was destined to happen I guess. I was expecting to easily get a high speed rail ticket from Nanjing to Shanghai this morning, traveling for work. No luck, have to wait at least two hours for a train with seats.. in any class. Just getting busier and busier. I'll have to order online in adv...

heech

Well, it was destined to happen I guess. I was expecting to easily get a high speed rail ticket from Nanjing to Shanghai this morning, traveling for work. No luck, have to wait at least two hours for a train with seats.. in any class. Just getting busier and busier. I'll have to order online in adva...

heech

:eek: No wonder they build like there's no tomorrow - the only way to gain revenues is to build out more and gain transaction taxes! Doesn't it seem completely absurd to the average Chinese ? How do you intend the whole thing to be sustainable in the long term ? At some point - and I think it will ...

heech

And if your tour guide said you "couldn't go there", it's because she meant you didn't have time, or you didn't pay enough, or she just wanted to get home. Yea, right. I was born yesterday and have to learn from you. Thanks grandpa, for enlightening me. More likely BRF was accidentally 'u...

heech

:shock: Heech Ji, so the masked land revenues are inbuilt in the cost of apartment? We in India have to pay approx 10% of value of property as tax at the time of registration and then there are municipal taxes to be paid on regular basis. This is the main source of income for state governments in I...

heech

Err, this is just nothing but a property tax, just described differently. Sorry, I completely misread your original posting. Land is leased, but the lease payment is made once by the developer before construction. There is no follow on annual costs of any kind. If you purchase an apartment condo to...

heech

The concern before was whether the project would be operationally viable, not whether it was receiving "massive subsidies". Ah. But is it REALLY operationally viable. Can you run a company or even a country with the underlying economics of the Chinese HSR ? Is it paying any return on the ...

heech

Ahh.. Nice onree no ? You don't have to pay for capital (and also the land is "free", no need to buy the right of way from anyone like in other countries) , and on top of that , fares have been dropping adjusted for inflation ..---> all in all, massive subsidies, the classic definition of...

heech

Heech: If there's no property tax, what's the source of income for municipalities to spend on recurring maintenance and public services ? Do homeowners pay an annual land lease, considering that all land is owned by the state and leased out for various terms (99 years or less) ? Yep, your understan...

heech

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/business/global/despite-a-deadly-crash-rail-system-has-good-safety-record.html?ref=international While the crash is still talked about in China today, statistics suggest that China’s high-speed trains have actually proved to be one of the world’s safest transportati...

heech

Is it time we restart the conversation about high speed rail...? I remember lots and lots and lots of discussion here, probably in this very thread, about high speed rail in China. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/business/global/high-speed-train-system-is-huge-success-for-china.html?pagewanted=all...

heech

I'd like to ask some practical questions to take this discussion away from the standard argumentative line. This is primarily for PRC residents of Beijing and Shanghai, but anyone who's familiar with the situation is welcome to answer: * What's the property tax rate in these cities ? Is it a fixed ...

heech

I think BRF is probably "accidentally" blocked, rather than intentionally blocked. I say that because BRF is indeed not available from some of my network points (like my home DSL), but it absolutely is available directly from my China Unicom 3G phone. Any of the really sensitive sites woul...

heech

And just for frame of reference, 30 years ago 100% of Chinese lived in those conditions or worse. Heech, it was not that bad. Even 30 years ago in the 1980s, "Da Yuan" or big campuses of government/military/state company dormitory buildings, usually 3~4 stories with reliable supply of ele...

heech

Keep in mind the above pictures are of areas dominated by migrant workers in Beijing. Migrant workers (those without hukou) represent something like 20% of the population of Beijing. And as I mentioned before, anyone NOT a migrant worker but native to Beijing must be a millionaire (in USD terms)... ...

heech

Last week, I took a trip to Shanghai with our new baby. Because of her age, we decided to splurge and go with the more expensive "business" class seats. These seats have been much maligned by many (inside and outside of China) because of their price.... roughly 50%-80% more than normal &qu...

heech

ArmenT wrote:
Acharya wrote:100-km Chinese traffic jam enters Day 9

http://theinternetpost.net/2013/02/25/1 ... ers-day-9/
Old news. That was some time in February.

Actually, if you look at the link... the original story is from 2010.

heech

Very interesting article, primarily about the Indian economy actually, but uses many data points from the Chinese economy for comparison purposes: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/business/global/indias-falling-economic-tide-exposes-its-chronic-troubles.html?pagewanted=all Poor infrastructure has a...

heech

Very interesting times in the Chinese and Indian economies. Potentially at inflection points for both. A few quick observations (quick because I'm typing on my Iphone): - who said this forum is blocked? I'm on my standard China Unicom 3G connection. - high speed rail is busier than ever. Random mid-...

heech

Responding to Idev's point, I think China is absolutely over-educated for its current level of economic achievement. After all, that's exactly the point that was made in the NY Times article quoted earlier in this thread: millions of Chinese university graduates are under-employed, working in menial...

heech

This pis*sing match reminds me of a certain section from Nassim Taleb's latest book Antifragile. He talks about cause and effect and how we mistake one for the other. Did western countries get educated before they got rich or was it the other way around? In fact, it is wealth that results in money ...

heech

From UNESCO http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/TableViewer/tableView.aspx China Secondary enrollment 1990 is 38% While we are at it Thailand 2012 secondary enrollment is 78% As I said China is now catching up to Thailand. Your link doesn't work. I'll help you with a few that does, since you seem to...

heech

It may come as a shock to you but many of the western societies were 100% literate in 1930. SoKo & Japan were 100% literate by the 1950’s and Japan certainly was largely literate before 1940. Doesn't shock me at all. This is partly why Japan and South Korea were both able to take off so quickly...

heech

to me it looks like a person burning a candle at both ends to match the light of an led bulb. I really have no idea what that means. I hope that analogy makes more sense to other Indians. According to the 2010 census, Chinese literacy rates among youths is as high as its going to get... 99.7% of th...

heech

A hundred years ago, the US was about to enter the Golden Age of American Agriculture. ... My ancestors lost it all. They simply didn't see it coming. They were driven from the land and into poverty for many years with the advent of the Great Depression. I'll say it again, if China plans to continu...

heech

I'll say it again, if China plans to continue its economy to be export based then good luck because China will need it. I don't think enough people actually read China's five-year plans. Here's the highlights from the most recent one, covering the 2011-2015 period: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english...

heech

I would remind everyone that Capitalism has its own mind that it sometimes deposits in a panic. There are business cycles. Things go up and things go down. It's rarely in a straight line. The US goes through through these things every 20 to 50 years. While what you say is absolutely correct, and th...

heech

I started these most recent discussions by talking about my decision to R2C, and some of my personal experiences there from the most recent trip. Let me talk a little about something else I observed that worries me, when it comes to the real estate bubble. First off, the "ghost cities" mem...

heech

The tone of chinese so far...... We have arrived, We have arrived, We have arrived, We have arrived, We have arrived..... Well, I'm not going to speak for any other Chinese. But I think if you spoke to more Chinese, you'd soon see this is not at all a common view. China is just in the process of *a...

heech

What are the numbers for non-Chinese using Chinese sites like alibaba etc ? I suspect not so hot. Not yet. China has yet to come out with something that has global appeal. Or to work out how to make something so. But that's not to say it never will. Also, you can just buy it. Interesting times. I s...

heech

Added later: You mention 'permanently crippled'. I have clearly stated in my posts that these 'me-too' companies provide a platform (or a springboard) for future advantage in the area. IMO,having these companies is an advantage and I dont believe there is any permanent reason for things to continue...

heech

If a chinese company went to court here (would that be ironic or what), I am not sure what the outcome would be, but one can guess. I think I know what the outcome would be: the Chinese company would get the same treatment that an American company would. Why? Because the sheer definition of a "...

heech

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/busin ... ml?hp&_r=0

heech

No one who actually works in high tech would question the product + technology R&D coming out of east Asia. Those who don't... well, it's a pointless debate in that case. I think we're actually just now getting to the tipping point, in terms of when China is going to explode in economic importan...

heech

The contention here, at least in my mind, is that people in such system also tend to not be the state's obedient subjects and that you can have one or the other, but not both for a meaningful time. First, let me say that the fact that these peoples will not be "obedient subjects" doesn't ...

heech

There might really be a lack of the "innovation gene" in East Asians. For as wealthy as Japan, Korea and Taiwan are, they are no great innovators. The US and other mainly Caucasian nations still dominate the invention front. The East Asians do well with expanding upon basic discoveries by...

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