Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:SSridhar or anyone
Can we see an English version of his thesis?
Thanks in advance.
I am trying to locate, will let you know if I can.

But, Wang Huning's thesis is extraordinary in its breadth. No wonder he was directly admitted to Masters program at Fudan without a Bachelor's degree.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

Thanks.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ricky_v »

https://palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/the ... ng-huning/
While it’s hard to be certain what Wang really believes today inside his black box, he was once an immensely prolific author, publishing nearly 20 books along with numerous essays. And the obvious continuity between the thought in those works and what’s happening in China today says something fascinating about how Beijing has come to perceive the world through the eyes of Wang Huning.
But Wang was also beginning to pick up the strands of what would become another core thread of his life’s work: the necessary centrality of culture, tradition, and value structures to political stability.

Wang elaborated on these ideas in a 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” which would become one of his most cited works. In it, he argued that the CCP must urgently consider how society’s “software” (culture, values, attitudes) shapes political destiny as much as its “hardware” (economics, systems, institutions). While seemingly a straightforward idea, this was notably a daring break from the materialism of orthodox Marxism.
Examining China in the midst of Deng’s rapid opening to the world, Wang perceived a country “in a state of transformation” from “an economy of production to an economy of consumption,” while evolving “from a spiritually oriented culture to a materially oriented culture,” and “from a collectivist culture to an individualistic culture.”

Meanwhile, he believed that the modernization of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” was effectively leaving China without any real cultural direction at all. “There are no core values in China’s most recent structure,” he warned. This could serve only to dissolve societal and political cohesion.

That, he said, was untenable. Warning that “the components of the political culture shaped by the Cultural Revolution came to be divorced from the source that gave birth to this culture, as well as from social demands, social values, and social relations”—and thus “the results of the adoption of Marxism were not always positive”—he argued that, “Since 1949, we have criticized the core values of the classical and modern structures, but have not paid enough attention to shaping our own core values.” Therefore: “we must create core values.” Ideally, he concluded, “We must combine the flexibility of [China’s] traditional values with the modern spirit [both Western and Marxist].”
to spend six months in the United States as a visiting scholar. Profoundly curious about America, Wang took full advantage, wandering about the country like a sort of latter-day Chinese Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting more than 30 cities and nearly 20 universities.

What he found deeply disturbed him, permanently shifting his view of the West and the consequences of its ideas.

Wang recorded his observations in a memoir that would become his most famous work: the 1991 book America Against America.
In it, he marvels at homeless encampments in the streets of Washington DC, out-of-control drug crime in poor black neighborhoods in New York and San Francisco, and corporations that seemed to have fused themselves to and taken over responsibilities of government. Eventually, he concludes that America faces an “unstoppable undercurrent of crisis” produced by its societal contradictions, including between rich and poor, white and black, democratic and oligarchic power, egalitarianism and class privilege, individual rights and collective responsibilities, cultural traditions and the solvent of liquid modernity.

But while Americans can, he says, perceive that they are faced with “intricate social and cultural problems,” they “tend to think of them as scientific and technological problems” to be solved separately. This gets them nowhere, he argues, because their problems are in fact all inextricably interlinked and have the same root cause: a radical, nihilistic individualism at the heart of modern American liberalism.

“The real cell of society in the United States is the individual,” he finds. This is so because the cell most foundational (per Aristotle) to society, “the family, has disintegrated.” Meanwhile, in the American system, “everything has a dual nature, and the glamour of high commodification abounds. Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification.” This “commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems.” In the end, “the American economic system has created human loneliness” as its foremost product, along with spectacular inequality. As a result, “nihilism has become the American way, which is a fatal shock to cultural development and the American spirit.”

Moreover, he says that the “American spirit is facing serious challenges” from new ideational competitors. Reflecting on the universities he visited and quoting approvingly from Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, he notes a growing tension between Enlightenment liberal rationalism and a “younger generation [that] is ignorant of traditional Western values” and actively rejects its cultural inheritance. “If the value system collapses,” he wonders, “how can the social system be sustained?”

Ultimately, he argues, when faced with critical social issues like drug addiction, America’s atomized, deracinated, and dispirited society has found itself with “an insurmountable problem” because it no longer has any coherent conceptual grounds from which to mount any resistance.
Meanwhile, contrary to trite Western assumptions of an inherently communal Chinese culture, the sense of atomization and low social trust in China has become so acute that it’s led to periodic bouts of anguished societal soul-searching after oddly regular instances in which injured individuals have been left to die on the street by passers-by habitually distrustful of being scammed.

Feeling alone and unable to get ahead in a ruthlessly consumerist society, Chinese youth increasingly describe existing in a state of nihilistic despair encapsulated by the online slang term neijuan (“involution”), which describes a “turning inward” by individuals and society due to a prevalent sense of being stuck in a draining rat race where everyone inevitably loses. This despair has manifested itself in a movement known as tangping, or “lying flat,” in which people attempt to escape that rat race by doing the absolute bare minimum amount of work required to live, becoming modern ascetics.
According to a leaked account by one of his old friends, Xi has found himself, like Wang, “repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveaux riches, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self-respect, and such ‘moral evils’ as drugs and prostitution.” Wang has now seemingly convinced Xi that they have no choice but to take drastic action to head off existential threats to social order being generated by Western-style economic and cultural liberal-capitalism—threats nearly identical to those that scourge the U.S.

This intervention has taken the form of the Common Prosperity campaign, with Xi declaring in January that “We absolutely must not allow the gap between rich and poor to get wider,” and warning that “achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a major political issue related to the party’s governing foundations.”

This is why anti-monopoly investigations have hit China’s top technology firms with billions of dollars in fines and forced restructurings and strict new data rules have curtailed China’s internet and social media companies. It’s why record-breaking IPOs have been put on hold and corporations ordered to improve labor conditions, with “996” overtime requirements made illegal and pay raised for gig workers. It’s why the government killed off the private tutoring sector overnight and capped property rental price increases. It’s why the government has announced “excessively high incomes” are to be “adjusted.”
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ricky_v »

https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wa ... rdquo.html
This means that Wang has also become widely equated with China’s more combative strategic turn under Xi – a view that is undeniably credible given Wang’s history of rejection of Western globalization and all that it portends for China’s future if left unchecked. Yet a key piece of his thinking that is downplayed in profiles of Wang as a hardline, if ideologically tinged, power politician is his view of culture – expressed as “tradition,” “values," or “civilization” – as an independent factor in determining political outcomes.

As an intellectual, Wang is therefore one in a long line of thinkers who have identified modernization as a process in permanent tension with the shared belief systems that bind human communities together. Viewed from the perspective of political order, modernization is desirable only insofar it can be counterbalanced with the creation of new value systems whose functional role is to keep institutions strong and societies governable. Strong states are culturally unified states. For an establishment intellectual in the context of CCP-ruled China, this means preserving and centralizing Party authority; renovating and expanding faith in Party socialism; and recalibrating globalization to make the international system more conducive to Party survival.

Wang is an “ideologue” in the sense that his views emphasize the importance of homogenizing values to conform to the Party Center’s strategic interests regardless of domain – in other words, his role as an official is not confined solely to propaganda or ideological education. At the same time, it is clearly no accident that Wang’s rise through the political ranks has coincided with an increasingly urgent emphasis on political belief and unity of purpose within the Party (e.g. the “Remember the Mission” campaign and political rectification of the Party’s internal security apparatus); orchestrated veneration of Xi Jinping and Xi Jinping Thought; and the enforced cultural cleansing carried out among religious communities and along China’s ethnic frontiers.

For all of these reasons, Wang’s role in China’s history may end up being that of another would-be “engineer of the soul,”[5] who for both political and nationalistic reasons envisions the salvation of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics as attainable only through the unceasing transformation of those who live within and beneath it.
The text translated here, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” is among Wang Huning’s most cited articles and, at the time of its publication, contributed to a broader intellectual movement within late 1980s China aimed at challenging the Marxist model of socialism.[6] Wang’s argument is simple: it is a society’s cultural factors (rather than its economic organization) that create its politics. Changes in what Wang calls social “software” – values, feelings, psychology, and attitudes – can therefore shape a society’s political future. However, Wang’s argument also operates on another level: as an assertion that China’s political culture, and therefore political path, is different than that of the West. Examining China, Wang finds society in the midst of transforming from a “culturally oriented political culture” driven by political mobilization to an “institutionally oriented political economy” driven by economic mobilization. Essentially, he is describing the shift from Maoism to Dengism, which replaced emphasis on class struggle with political stability and improved material standards of living.
In its basic conception Wang’s analysis draws from the field of communication theory as it emerged in the U.S. during the mid 1960s. This branch of social science emphasized the impact of traditional political culture and other aspects of individual psychology on nation-building and the creation of “modern political life” in emerging societies.[7] Like the American political scientists writing decades before him, Wang finds a persistent and undesirable tension between past values and what is needed to create a more modern future. His examples are both historical and contemporary, addressing what he calls China’s “history-society-culture nexus.” Historically, he claims, China has already passed through three phases in the development of its political culture: traditional, modern, and Marxist-socialist. Because none of these have resulted in the elimination of structures preceding them, China’s political culture remains in an “unformed state” – still modernizing, but without a “proper identity.”
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ricky_v »

https://www.readingthechinadream.com/wa ... rdquo.html
Translation by David Ownby
The process of global integration has prompted contemporary political science to become increasingly aware of the political importance of cultural differences between societies and peoples. Overcoming natural obstacles, breaking down artificial barriers, and eliminating parochialism have been the stepping stones for the introduction of cultural factors into the work of political scientists. Ruth Benedict's (1887-1948) 1946 study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, can be seen as the beginning of this process. Human societies inevitably structure life so as to favor certain ways of coping with events and certain ways of measuring them, and people living in particular societies see their ways of solving problems as their basis for viewing the entire world.

More than ever before, people today have come to understand that political life is not solely determined by “hardware” factors such as institutions, systems, power, and norms, because there is also "software" involved, in other words, underlying or internal forces, such as values, feelings, psychology, attitudes, etc. The analysis of political culture has grown precisely out of people’s responses to this new understanding. Chinese politics is currently changing. In this situation, it is necessary to examine the history of Chinese culture and its components, its synchronic and diachronic structures, its current state and what it is becoming.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

Thanks ricky_v.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

Thanks ricky_v. I read all those last week. There is an essay by Yi Wang which is most informative. Will try to upload it.
Basically, Wang Huning was his own BRF Strat Forum and worked on reconciling Maoism with the traditional China values system.
He is brilliant but the three leaders were smart to listen to him for 30 years.
Calling him Han Fe is incomplete.
He is a combination of Confucius and Han Fe with modern Marxist dialecticism.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ldev »

SSridhar wrote:
ramana wrote:SSridhar or anyone
Can we see an English version of his thesis?
Thanks in advance.
I am trying to locate, will let you know if I can.

But, Wang Huning's thesis is extraordinary in its breadth. No wonder he was directly admitted to Masters program at Fudan without a Bachelor's degree.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/a-2-500-boo ... -1.1547835

His doctoral thesis is certainly only in Mandarin. HIs book, "America vs America", written by him during his 6 month stay in the US in 1989 was also only published in Mandarin. There have been no English translations of that book AFAIK. As the article linked above says, copies of it were sold for as much as $2500 in early 2021 when it was suddenly in demand in China to understand the convulsions the US was going through during the transition from the Trump administration to Biden.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

ldev, His first book in Mandarin is a synopsis of his doctoral thesis. His book America against America is available in English.
Here is a synopsis of Yi Wang paper:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... ng-huning/

The Bloomberg article has a defensive tone in that it tries to show why WH is incorrect.
Yes, thirty years later things might deviate but the trajectory is correct.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:He is a combination of Confucius and Han Fe with modern Marxist dialecticism.
Yes, that's an accurate description.

Mao hated Confucius. The grave of Confucius was vandalized during the Cultural Revolution. But, XJP who admires Mao and wants to follow him to a T, wants Confucian order in society and stability. My surmise could be wrong but it could be in no small measure due to the influence of of Wang Huning. XJP was vice President to Hu and might have come under Wang's influence even then.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

Hu ning= Shanghai tranquility
Confucius was also from the Shanghai region.

Wang Huning is an advisor or rajguru or insider intellectual
The other kinds are public intellectuals who criticize the leaders from outside.
Public intellectuals are a product of the European Enlightenment when it became customary to criticize the leaders.
Eg. Voltaire: "I disagree with what you say but shall defend to the death your right to say it!"
India abounds in the latter kind.
The advisor and the leader are a two-part equation.
Yes, the advisor must be wise but the leader should be wiser to accept the advice.
In fact, Machiavelli cautions on a foolish king and wise advisor dynamic for the wise advisor can soon take over.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

Image
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chin ... -7l0kwrfvc

China’s economy expanded by 4.9 per cent in the third quarter, the slowest pace of growth in a year, as a strong rebound following last year’s pandemic slump faded.

The economy has slowed sharply since the first quarter when GDP expanded by 18.3 per cent compared with the same quarter in 2020, when growth was hit by a lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19. It slowed to 7.9 per cent in the second quarter. Economists had expected GDP to rise 5.2 per cent in the third quarter.

On a quarterly basis, growth eased to 0.2 per cent between July and September from a downwardly revised 1.2 per cent in the second quarter.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chin ... -mqtc0wpj0

China’s auto sales slumped by almost 20 per cent last month against a year earlier, falling for a fifth consecutive month as a prolonged global shortage of semiconductors and a domestic power crunch disrupted production.

Honda said that its China sales fell by 28.1 per cent, while Nissan said its sales dropped 26.2 per cent. Sales for two China joint ventures of Volkswagen slumped 48.6 per cent and 23.1 per cent respectively, the passenger car association said.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Cyrano »

Despite Galwan, India’s trade with China has grown. But there is a shiftNew Delhi

Notwithstanding the ongoing border dispute with China, and efforts to dilute economic linkages and reduce dependence, India’s merchandise trade with China is growing and may cross the $100 billion mark this year.
While Indian exports to China have seen an 18.54% year-on-year growth at $10.66 billion in April-August 2021, imports of Chinese goods have surged by over 58.1% at $34.14 billion, according to ministry of commerce data. The trade balance was heavily tilted in China’s favour with a surplus $23.48 billion during these first five months.

According to the official data, trade between the two countries has jumped by over 46.5% to $44.80 billion in April-August 2021 as compared to $30.58 billion in the same period last year. The bilateral trade between India and China in 2020-21 was $86.4 billion and the value of trade in a non-Covid year was about $82 billion (2019-20).

But behind the headline figures lie subtle shifts in trade patterns — there has been a shift in the balance of trade, and India is making conscious effort to reduce its dependence on essentials and this is showing results.

Incremental shift in balance of trade
Although the balance of trade is still in favour of China, exports from India are rising in absolute terms while Chinese imports are showing some decline after 2017-18.

According to the official data, Chinese import to India in 2017-18 was $76.38 billion and Indian export to China was a mere $13.33 billion that year. Since then, there has been constant dip in Chinese imports — $70.32 billion (in 2018-19), $65.26 billion (2019-20) and $65.21 billion (2020-21). India’s exports, however, shown an uptick especially in the past year — 16.75 billion (in 2018-19), $16.61 billion (2019-20) and $21.19 billion (2020-21), mainly because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focused attention on the Aatmnirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan (Self-reliant India initiative).

Consequently, trade deficit has reduced in the last three financial years — from $53.57 billion in 2018-19 to $48.65 billion in 2019-20 to $44.02 billion in 2020-21.

Reducing dependence - the PLI way
Industry experts and government officials say both India and China are not in a position to snap business ties because of interdependence in many areas. This is particularly true for Indian businesses such as the pharmaceutical industry, which depends on Chinese raw materials. Over 63% of India’s pharmaceutical imports are active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates, and almost 70% of it comes from China.

The sense in the government, across key ministries, is that over-dependence on one country for crucial items such as medicine is not prudent. In fact, India is making efforts to import APIs from alternate sources, besides taking policy measures to ramp up domestic production. India is also setting up bulk drug parks for ₹3,000 crore and has approved a production-linked incentive (PLI) package for promotion of domestic manufacturing of critical intermediates and APIs. The department of pharmaceuticals in June this year notified the PLI scheme for pharmaceuticals with an outlay of ₹15000 crore. Intermediaries and APIs are crucial chemical compounds (raw materials) required to manufacture formulations or medicines. While India is one of the leading exporters of formulations or generic medicines, for raw materials — intermediaries and APIs — China enjoys the number one position in the world. India imports about five dozens APIs and intermediaries from China.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Cyrano »

Contd...
New Delhi is taking similar measures in other fields also. Over a dozen sectors have been given priority and investments in these industries have been incentivised through ₹1.97 lakh crore PLI schemes — including in the areas of mobile manufacturing and specified electronic components, manufacturing of medical devices, advance chemistry cell (ACC) battery, electronic technology products, automobiles and auto components, telecom and networking products, man-made textiles and technical textiles, food products, high efficiency solar PV modules, white goods and speciality steel. The government aims to raise minimum additional production in India by around ₹37.5 lakh crore over five years.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that most of the PLI schemes cover top 10 Chinese imports. The top 10 Chinese imports in the current financial year (up to August 2021) are electronics components, computer hardware, telecom instruments, organic chemicals, industrial machinery for dairy etc, residual chemicals and allied products, bulk drugs and intermediates, fertilisers, electronic instruments and consumer electronics.

The economic shift after Galwan

India’s strategy is clear – reduce overdependence on Chinese imports by creating domestic capacity. It knows that this cannot be achieved overnight, but policy efforts are in this direction, especially after the border dispute with China last year. Sino-Indian tensions shot up in June 2020 after a violent brawl between Chinese and Indian soldiers along the Line of Actual Control in the Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh in which 20 Indian army personnel and an unspecified number of Chinese were killed.

India took a series of actions against China after the violent brawl on June 15 last year in the Galwan Valley. On June 29 that year, the Narendra Modi govenment announced a ban on 59 mostly Chinese mobile applications such as Tik-Tok, UC Browser and WeChat, citing concerns that these are “prejudicial to sovereignty of India, defence of India, security of state and public order”. The following month, on July 23, India barred Chinese firms in bidding for public procurement of goods and services on the ground of national security.

But New Delhi adopted a pragmatic approach to ensure smooth supplies of essential items from China. In order to continue supplies of Covid-essential items from across the border, the July 23, 2020 order exempted certain “special cases” such as procurement of Covid essential medical supplies till December 31, 2020. Later, the deadline was extended up to October 31, 2021. The government, however, continues to strictly enforce its public procurement policy announced on July 23, 2020 that bars award of any project to contractors from countries sharing land borders with India without prior registration with a competent authority and security clearance from the ministry of external affairs (MEA) and the ministry of home affairs (MHA).
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ldev »

The Inevitable Rivalry
America, China, and the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics


Very good article in Foreign Affairs magazine by John Mearshemier, one of the great political scholars from the realistic school of thought on the monumental blunder committed by the US in facilitating the rise of a China to ultimately become a peer competitor to the US:
"Engagement [with China] may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history: there is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor. And it is now too late to do much about it."
U.S. policymakers failed to contain the rapid rise of China. Now, they confront a competitor that may be even more powerful than the Soviet Union at the peak of the Cold War, argues John J. Mearsheimer.
Some twitter posts on this article by Elbridge Colby
Elbridge Colby
@ElbridgeColby
John Mearsheimer cuts right through the guff. The policy of facilitating China's rise without protecting our own power base and position or insisting China change as conditions of that engagement was an immense, world-historical failure. We are only beginning to pay the price.
8:51 AM · Oct 20, 2021·Twitter Web App
Elbridge Colby
@ElbridgeColby
There is plenty of rightful blame for those who squandered American might in the Middle East. But little for those who aided the rise of the most powerful rival we've ever faced. Accountability needs to go there too.
8:52 AM · Oct 20, 2021·Twitter Web App
And finally John Mearshemier's views in the 1998-2000 time period on India's quest for nuclear weapons:

From Wiki
Also, in op-ed pieces written in 1998 and 2000 for The New York Times, Mearsheimer explains why it makes sense for India to pursue nuclear weapons. He argues that India has good strategic reasons to want a nuclear deterrent, especially to balance against China and Pakistan and to guarantee regional stability. He also criticized the American counter-proliferation policy towards India, which he considers to be unrealistic and harmful to American interests in the region.
Very prescient and ahead of his time!!
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by NRao »

Interesting take

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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Anoop »

Since we don't have a Chinese economy thread, posting this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEhvGrWzesY

Salient points:

1. Proposal for property tax levy (currently only piloted in Shanghai and Chongqin) is depressing real estate stocks, which is reflected in lower construction pace and in general fiscal overextension of major property developers. Property tax legislation runs into ideological opposition because property is not owned, only leased for a period of years - 70 or so years. However, the proposed property taxes are modest (only 0.4-0.6% of value). There is already another tax head that accounts for around 10% of property value at the time of purchase - real estate tax, land occupancy tax, agricultural land use tax, stamp paper tax etc).

2. This proposal is likely to hit wealthy CCP officials via depressed property values, many of whom own large number of properties (many own over 300 properties!).

3. Local governments see property tax as a way to increase revenue as the previously dependable revenue source viz. land sales for property development (in many cases, more than 100% of the local public spending budget), is declining. City level debt ratio of 85 cities is over 100% in 2020, with the top 10 cities exceeded 500%. Local government performance is very important for the CCP cadre because that is how they build their pipeline of leaders.

4. The property tax pilot experiment in Shanghai has not yielded the results expected - only 1% of revenue came from the property tax and property prices continued to rise.

5. The effect on the larger economy is expected to be decreased spending as people budget for the additional tax. Fears of the tax levy is leading to auctions of unsold properties as owners try to reduce their exposure before it gets harder. Guangzhou and Beijing conducted auctions of unsold property, but even those have resulted in less than 50% being sold at auctions.

6. Vacant and/or unfinished apartments have the potential to house around 350 million people! With real estate companies defaulting on interests and fears of property tax depressing sales, they are likely to get squeezed even more.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by srin »

Obsession of high-speed rail causes China’s freight, energy, and debt crisis
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

China would have risen eventually. What the great Poohbahs in Duplicity thought was by facilitating the rise, the Chinese will be beholden to them and do their bidding. The rise activities started with President Clinton. He is still there. Why not ask him?
He used to talk of G-2!
Helped China into WTO as a developing nation.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Vivek K »

But India has missed several chances to be an equal, great power!! We cannot blame others for our problems when we ourselves don’t take the required steps.

Indian babudom is killing not just the MIC but all of Indian industry!! And we at BRF cheer continual imports saying - there is enough room for imports and domestic!! Only hope is to look inwards! To get some techs from overseas but to build everything in India. There will always be emergencies - but don’t use them as an excuse to import!! Use them as excuses to work harder, to expedite deliveries and design!!
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

Cyrano wrote:Despite Galwan, India’s trade with China has grown. But there is a shiftNew Delhi

Notwithstanding the ongoing border dispute with China, and efforts to dilute economic linkages and reduce dependence, India’s merchandise trade with China is growing and may cross the $100 billion mark this year.
While Indian exports to China have seen an 18.54% year-on-year growth at $10.66 billion in April-August 2021, imports of Chinese goods have surged by over 58.1% at $34.14 billion, according to ministry of commerce data. The trade balance was heavily tilted in China’s favour with a surplus $23.48 billion during these first five months.
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Does these figures represent only imports from mainland China ? ., does it include the humongous imports from Hong Kong as well ? There are also "chinese" imports relabelled coming from the SAARC countries !!

India Imports from Hong Kong was US$14.58 Billion during 2020, according to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade.

https://tradingeconomics.com/india/imports/hong-kong
Suraj
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Suraj »

HK has always been bucketed separately. I'm writing an article on the topic of India's trade balance.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

Please include the nature of the goods if you can find them.
We often get total figures but not the breakdown.
For example, finished goods give one picture while industrial machinery is another picture.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Cyrano »

Compared to Galwan clashes time where Chinese made TVs were ostensibly flung from balconies, I notice all around me (in desh right now) that everyone is back to consuming Chinese goods like nothing is going on at our Himalayan borders. China made mobile phones, laptops, gadgets, bicycles, home goods, sundry junk etc etc are being bought as before by aam janataa.

In a quick random sampling I did on Amazon India they seem to be indicating country of origin in product details but Flipkart doesnt seem to care at all. The Govt has shown little intent to enforce its own guidelines.

So at least consumer goods imports from China are probably back to pre-pandemic levels I'd think. And thats a real shame on Indian people and the Govt.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Larry Walker »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9fALKGq6XU

This video has a very interesting hint on why PRC is not bothered about its total debt to GDP ratio. CCP is playing the grand game of replacing USD with CNY as global currency and that way Chinese debt will no longer be of concern as PRC can control the global value of its CNY after converting all other currency debts into CNY. This strengthens my suspicion that Covid was a bio warfare launched by CCP on the world to create this final opportunity for CNY to become global currency. And I suspect USA is playing PRC by letting it keep inflating its debt bubble and will deal the final blow when CCP will push for CNY to be global currency. If this final act is stopped - PRC economy will crash and PLA themselves will hang CCP by the nearest lamp-post.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by kit »

Cyrano wrote:
So at least consumer goods imports from China are probably back to pre-pandemic levels I'd think. And thats a real shame on Indian people and the Govt.
i suppose there needs to be an equally affordable alternative made in india option before this can be enforced..also would it be against WTO
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Sachin »

kit wrote:i suppose there needs to be an equally affordable alternative made in india option before this can be enforced..also would it be against WTO
This is the catch. I do get many electronic items - as an amatuer radio operator - and the situation is that for many of the items we require no options are available from Indian manufacturers. Even Indian dealers (middle men) get stuff from China. To give the devil its due; China also makes many products which have the same features of US made products at 1/3rd at the price. I am in favour of GoI putting restrictions on Chinese imports; but then there is also a responsibility to ensure that such items are available through alternate sources within India.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

ramana wrote:The rise activities started with President Clinton. . . . .
And many other things for China, like helping Chinese nuclear technology.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Cyrano »

kit wrote:
Cyrano wrote:
So at least consumer goods imports from China are probably back to pre-pandemic levels I'd think. And thats a real shame on Indian people and the Govt.
i suppose there needs to be an equally affordable alternative made in india option before this can be enforced..also would it be against WTO
If Indian people try to consciously NOT buy made in China/made in PRC items, that will deflate demand naturally. WTO has nothing to do with it.

GoI if I remember correctly, put curbs on procurement of China made products (through it's e-procurement portal) in June 2020, WTO had nothing to say There were reports of some easing in Feb/March 2021 but the policy still stands. How strictly was this enforced and how much imports were directly reduced by this policy is not known.

Overall trade deficit with China is slated for substantial increase this year as I noted in the Economy thread.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Pratyush »

I am beginning to see Indian made low quality products replacing cheap low quality PRC stuff in the local markets.

The standardized Indian product remains 50% more expensive. But it's a welcome development for me.

When buying stuff from Amazon or Flipkart I always check the country of origin in the product discription. Before I place my order.

For most of items I require made in India works.

Cell phones are an issue for the moment. But I expect it to be solved in the next few years.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by yensoy »

Larry Walker wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9fALKGq6XU

This video has a very interesting hint on why PRC is not bothered about its total debt to GDP ratio. CCP is playing the grand game of replacing USD with CNY as global currency and that way Chinese debt will no longer be of concern as PRC can control the global value of its CNY after converting all other currency debts into CNY. This strengthens my suspicion that Covid was a bio warfare launched by CCP on the world to create this final opportunity for CNY to become global currency. And I suspect USA is playing PRC by letting it keep inflating its debt bubble and will deal the final blow when CCP will push for CNY to be global currency. If this final act is stopped - PRC economy will crash and PLA themselves will hang CCP by the nearest lamp-post.
The problem with CNY being a global currency is that there is almost no way for countries to create a source of CNY. Most countries, and in particular the countries along the BRI region, have significant negative trade balances with China. So how exactly are they going to generate a surplus of CNY to invest in Chinese government bonds?

USA on the other hand runs a significant trade deficit (deliberately, if I may suggest) that makes many countries around the world including India have trade surpluses with the US which they can and do use to purchase US debt. Add to it the regulation and free conversion which makes it all the more attractive.

Any theorist or commentator who doesn't highlight this difference has no clue what they are talking about or deliberately avoiding the elephant in the room. I see nothing to indicate that China wants to purchase more from the rest of the world - they keep talking about it and organizing trade shows but basically they want very little hard goods from outside. The so-called rise in CNY settlements are probably because the BRI funding is in CNY which is used to purchase CNY denominated goods & services from China. Which means that the BRI countries are the CNY debtors, not China, and higher CNY interest rates will only hurt them.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by Suraj »

ramana wrote:Please include the nature of the goods if you can find them.
We often get total figures but not the breakdown.
For example, finished goods give one picture while industrial machinery is another picture.
That will be covered. This will be a proper analysis and not a superficial effort to fit some fluff around a conclusion - too much SM chatter is about the latter.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by nam »

The simple fact is the Chinese goods use dollar to sell their goods to US & European market. That's one of the reason they have such a huge currency reserve. They had been buying lot of dollars to keep the Yuan low and use the dollar for trade.

No US, UK or European entity is going to pay in Yuan for the goods from China.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by DavidD »

China's debt to GDP ratio has been falling for 4 straight quarters.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ht-quarter
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by NRao »

Who is behind all these sudden changes in China? Very interesting article

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
One day in August 2021, Zhao Wei disappeared. For one of China’s best-known actresses to physically vanish from public view would have been enough to cause a stir on its own. But Zhao’s disappearing act was far more thorough: overnight, she was erased from the internet. Her Weibo social media page, with its 86 million followers, went offline, as did fan sites dedicated to her. Searches for her many films and television shows returned no results on streaming sites. Zhao’s name was scrubbed from the credits of projects she had appeared in or directed, replaced with a blank space. Online discussions uttering her name were censored. Suddenly, little trace remained that the 45-year-old celebrity had ever existed.

.......
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by arnabh »

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news ... ern-border

New Delhi: The growing collaboration between the Pakistan Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—so that India is forced to stretch its resources across two fronts—that was being executed covertly all these years, is now being done overtly.

In the second and third week of September, around 40 PLA personnel visited specific areas in Neelam and Leepa valleys of Pakistan occupied Kashmir and did a “study” of the routes that are used by jihadi terrorists waiting at launch pads to enter in India.

Official sources told The Sunday Guardian that these 40 officials were divided into seven groups. These separate groups were accompanied by Pakistani Army officials and uniforms and ISI officials in civil dress, apart from language interpreters.

Apart from visiting the routes taken by terrorists to infiltrate into India, the Chinese officials surveyed Pakistani Army posts overlooking the Indian posts along the Line of Control. The PLA officers, sources indicated, also interacted with the local villagers, for which interpreters were used. The reasons for these recent developments, which are an indication of the evolving and enhanced cooperation between the two countries, are still being studied.

According to an official aware of the development, this “survey” exercise might be related to Chinese-aided infrastructure developments that are likely to come up in the coming days to strengthen Pakistani Army assets in the region and aid the jihadi network present there to carry out more effective anti-India operations.

Indian Army and allied resources, for all practical purposes, are right now engaged in a two-front war—with Pakistan on the Western border and with China on the Eastern border. “There is a cease fire with Pakistan on the Western front, but infiltration is still happening and cross-border terrorism is still being executed. Similarly, while we have done more than 10 levels of talks with the PLA to ease and resolve the tensions along the Eastern border, the PLA is regularly challenging us at existing and new fronts. This is not a coincidence. While we are handling these two challenges without any difficulties, it is also a fact that our resources are being tested for days and months,” an official said.

The growing cooperation between GHQ, Rawalpindi, and Central Military Commission, August 1st Building, Beijing, has not only raised concern among observers in South Block in New Delhi, but has also been taken note of by other countries interested in the region.
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by ramana »

NRao wrote:Who is behind all these sudden changes in China? Very interesting article

The Triumph and Terror of Wang Huning
One day in August 2021, Zhao Wei disappeared. For one of China’s best-known actresses to physically vanish from public view would have been enough to cause a stir on its own. But Zhao’s disappearing act was far more thorough: overnight, she was erased from the internet. Her Weibo social media page, with its 86 million followers, went offline, as did fan sites dedicated to her. Searches for her many films and television shows returned no results on streaming sites. Zhao’s name was scrubbed from the credits of projects she had appeared in or directed, replaced with a blank space. Online discussions uttering her name were censored. Suddenly, little trace remained that the 45-year-old celebrity had ever existed.

.......
In historical terms, Wang Huning is most like Zhuge Liang for he is a pragmatical strategic advisor to CPC leaders. He combines the Confucius teaching with Taoism and Han Fei's Legalism.
Zhuge Liang (pronunciation in PRC Standard Mandarin: [ʈʂú.kɤ̀ ljâŋ] ; 181–234),[2] courtesy name Kongming, was a Chinese statesman and military strategist. He was chancellor and later regent of the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms period. He is recognised as the most accomplished strategist of his era, and has been compared to Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War.[3] His reputation as an intelligent and learned scholar grew even while he was living in relative seclusion, earning him the nickname "Wolong" or "Fulong", meaning "Crouching Dragon" or "Sleeping Dragon". Zhuge Liang is often depicted wearing a Taoist robe and holding a hand fan made of crane feathers.[4]

Zhuge Liang was a Confucian-oriented[5] "Legalist".[6] He liked to compare himself to the sage minister Guan Zhong,[6] developing Shu's agriculture and industry to become a regional power,[7] and attached great importance to the works of Shen Buhai and Han Fei,[8] refusing to indulge local elites and adopting strict, but fair and clear laws. In remembrance of his governance, local people maintained shrines to him for ages.[9] His name has become synonymous with wisdom and strategy in Chinese culture.[citation needed] Zhuge Liang is depicted in the Wu Shuang Pu (無雙譜, Table of Peerless Heroes) by Jin Guliang.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang
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Re: Neutering & Defanging Chinese Threat (15-11-2017)

Post by SSridhar »

NRao, I have moved your post on the 'Third Road for Xi' to the '19th Congress' thread.
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