PRC Economy - New Reflections : April 20 2015

rsingh · Post by **rsingh** » 27 Oct 2015 20:28

Ashi Wrote

You need some logic training. Even the word you quote me "See we may be bad but the US is in a worse position!". Show me where I say it I will sent you a $1000 check. ^_^ I am talking about e-commerce and malls, and you can change the topic to how China stack it up to US. LOL ... OK, I will really stop here.

Ashi, you do not have to insult somebody to make your point. We are free people. When somebody insults (us iIndian) we do not feel threatened or downgraded (as most of Chinese do and try to find a face saving solution). We just laugh at the naivety. We can change our politician every on regular basis...........it says a lot about us. You talk to us on equal footing when you have that privilege. For now you can not understand so stop giving lecture about logic and bring you facts without insults. May be you are used to insults by but we are not. Even if you are living in free world your thinking is not free. you have to insult somebody to be heard.............that is the sign of oppressed one. Anyway we can not change past.

ashi · Post by **ashi** » 28 Oct 2015 05:41

rsingh wrote: Ashi, you do not have to insult somebody to make your point. We are free people. When somebody insults (us iIndian) we do not feel threatened or downgraded (as most of Chinese do and try to find a face saving solution). We just laugh at the naivety. We can change our politician every on regular basis...........it says a lot about us. You talk to us on equal footing when you have that privilege. For now you can not understand so stop giving lecture about logic and bring you facts without insults. May be you are used to insults by but we are not. Even if you are living in free world your thinking is not free. you have to insult somebody to be heard.............that is the sign of oppressed one. Anyway we can not change past.

rsingh, i am sure you are a nice gentleman and all, and what you say about Indian people is very true, can you also ask amit not to *started* the conversation by calling me 50center and then went on ridiculing me and how Chinese people were?

TKiran · Post by **TKiran** » 28 Oct 2015 05:50

I am in Shanghai China, I am visiting China for the first time. What I observed here is that though the Chinese economy is rapidly growing and there is a lot of pollution, literally every one smokes, including in Office, I don't see any hospitals around. Almost everyone is healthy including 80 year old grandma's and grandpa's. They are all physically fit, with no belly. Very surprised. Only difference is in food habits. Almost nobody brings 'dabba' to office. Their food mainly contains very hot boiled fresh vegetables, very hot boiled fresh meat, very hot boiled rice/noodles. Though Indians eat tasty food, most of the times it's already cold, in a 'dabba'. The Chinese are almost without exception everyone is healthy. I can't say they are eating 'saththvika' food as they eat meat / seafood almost always. Only that They eat hot and boiled freshly cooked food the entire nation has been without hospitals. Doctors have no future in china, as the entire population is healthy. Perhaps that is the greatest achievement of china more than its wonder of economy.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 28 Oct 2015 23:27

Chinese steel industry is flashing warning signs that the world cannot ignore

China's steel industry, the world's biggest, is in crisis.

The disaster is the result of a combination of factors, including a slowing Chinese economy, falling commodity prices, and an industry loaded with debt.

Earlier this month, state-owned enterprise (SOE) Sinosteel defaulted on a debt-interest payment of $315 million on bond notes maturing in 2017.

It's a sign that, despite China's best efforts at fiscal-policy easing and pledges to reform "zombie" SOEs, the worst may be coming faster than policymakers expected.

As Bloomberg reports, Zhu Jimin, the deputy head of the China Iron & Steel Association (CISA), said on Wednesday that collapsing demand is putting the entire industry at risk.

From Bloomberg:

“Production cuts are slower than the contraction in demand, therefore oversupply is worsening,” said Zhu at a quarterly briefing in Beijing by the main producers’ group. “Although China has cut interest rates many times recently, steel mills said their funding costs have actually gone up.”

“China’s steel demand evaporated at unprecedented speed as the nation’s economic growth slowed,” Zhu said. “As demand quickly contracted, steel mills are lowering prices in competition to get contracts.”

Average steel prices hit an all-time low on July 9. CISA notes that in September, steel demand contracted 8.9% from the same time a year before, and medium and large steel mills have lost $4.4 billion in the first nine months of 2015.

gashish · Post by **gashish** » 29 Oct 2015 04:24

Xinhua the Chinese propaganda machine does something bizzare...releases english psychedelic musical video "shishanwu" that explains upcoming Chinese 13th 5-year plan, which goes viral.

Bizarre, campy song explains China's 13th 5-year plan

Besides foreigners, the intended audience for this is surely yuppie urban chinese (deracinated in brf lingo) who love everything western.

Such sinic adaptations of foreign customs/culture which seem bizarre to an outsider are not uncommon. I was particularly struck by the "modern" urban Chinese wedding ceremonies - no trace of ancient chinese customs but lock,stock, & barrel copy of western, hollywood-style wedding (white gown and tuxedos and all) minus priest and church, of course,

Just could not wrap my head around it.

More on same story:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015 ... sic-video/

sanjaykumar · Post by **sanjaykumar** » 29 Oct 2015 06:12

http://www.theguardian.com/global-devel ... ng-obesity

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014 ... americans/

http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/a ... 5/fulltext

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-29610059

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/feature/id ... aily.shtml

https://www.google.ca/search?q=smoking+ ... r&dpr=1.25

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/ ... who-report

http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-fi ... statistics

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Oct 2015 07:07

>> lock,stock, & barrel copy of western, hollywood-style wedding (white gown and tuxedos and all) minus priest and church, of course,

yes I was wondering about that. I thought it was used by converted christians onlee but you say its used by all?

even the deracinated sickulars in india , do fall back on their traditional dresses for weddings and funerals.

japan also seems to obsessed with western suits. they are biggest market for armani suits one hears. their traditional clothes look so much better.

ashi · Post by **ashi** » 29 Oct 2015 10:36

Singha wrote:>> lock,stock, & barrel copy of western, hollywood-style wedding (white gown and tuxedos and all) minus priest and church, of course,

yes I was wondering about that. I thought it was used by converted christians onlee but you say its used by all?

even the deracinated sickulars in india , do fall back on their traditional dresses for weddings and funerals.

japan also seems to obsessed with western suits. they are biggest market for armani suits one hears. their traditional clothes look so much better.

Wedding in China usually are two parts. The new weds wear traditional clothes at home and have traditional ceremonies. Then they change clothes and go outside for pictures and have another ceremony at evening.

I am not so hanging on to something that is so past tense. The world is moving and changing. Pick tradionarl clothes as an example. The style of traditional clothes is not stationary in the last thousands years and itself keeps evolving. And most of the traditional clothes is not even convenient for modern daily work, or even going to bathroom.

member_22539 · Post by **member_22539** » 29 Oct 2015 20:05

gashish wrote:Xinhua the Chinese propaganda machine does something bizzare...releases english psychedelic musical video "shishanwu" that explains upcoming Chinese 13th 5-year plan, which goes viral.

Bizarre, campy song explains China's 13th 5-year plan

Besides foreigners, the intended audience for this is surely yuppie urban chinese (deracinated in brf lingo) who love everything western.

Such sinic adaptations of foreign customs/culture which seem bizarre to an outsider are not uncommon. I was particularly struck by the "modern" urban Chinese wedding ceremonies - no trace of ancient chinese customs but lock,stock, & barrel copy of western, hollywood-style wedding (white gown and tuxedos and all) minus priest and church, of course, Just could not wrap my head around it.

More on same story:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015 ... sic-video/

Man that was totally CRINGE-WORTHY.

Every time China pulls off that western sophisticated veneer for a while, something like this turd squeezes out through some crack for the whole world to see and laugh at. It wouldn't be even 1/10th as funny (and pathetic), if they weren't trying so hard to appear all hip and trendy. To think they actually made this for the Americans (mostly), unbelievable. I guess if you have crazy stuff hire a white guy business going along, this is to be expected. How embarrassing.

Not only does the stupid video (with a song kindergärtners would laugh at) not explain what they are actually going to do, they keep on praising the govt, party leadership, xi and what not. This is supposed to appeal to the world?

So much for world class.

Anyway, it grabs attention and never lets go (really, I want to forget and I CAN'T). In the end I know China has a 13th 5-year plan and probably everyone who saw it can't forget it like me. Was this their plan all along?

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 29 Oct 2015 20:19

I actually thought that China now has a 13.5 plan, kinda like software version. Scratched my head for the entire video about that....

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 29 Oct 2015 20:32

Interesting policy change to keep a large pool of available workers.

China ends one child policy

China has scrapped its one-child policy, allowing all couples to have two children for the first time since draconian family planning rules were introduced more than three decades ago.

The announcement followed a four-day Communist party summit in Beijing where China’s top leaders debated financial reforms and how to maintain growth at a time of heightened concerns about the economy.

China will “fully implement a policy of allowing each couple to have two children as an active response to an ageing population”, the party said in a statement published by Xinhua, the official news agency. “The change of policy is intended to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population,.”
....
....

Gus · Post by **Gus** » 29 Oct 2015 21:09

soon they will make it mandatory to have two child

nandakumar · Post by **nandakumar** » 29 Oct 2015 21:32

ashi wrote:
rsingh wrote: Ashi, you do not have to insult somebody to make your point. We are free people. When somebody insults (us iIndian) we do not feel threatened or downgraded (as most of Chinese do and try to find a face saving solution). We just laugh at the naivety. We can change our politician every on regular basis...........it says a lot about us. You talk to us on equal footing when you have that privilege. For now you can not understand so stop giving lecture about logic and bring you facts without insults. May be you are used to insults by but we are not. Even if you are living in free world your thinking is not free. you have to insult somebody to be heard.............that is the sign of oppressed one. Anyway we can not change past.
rsingh, i am sure you are a nice gentleman and all, and what you say about Indian people is very true, can you also ask amit not to *started* the conversation by calling me 50center and then went on ridiculing me and how Chinese people were?

I can understand your anguish. Let me tell you a story from the life Buddha. After his enlightenment he went about life as a mendicant ekeing out a living begging for food from whoever he can get it. He once wnt to the house of a rich man and stood before him seeking something to eat. The rich man looked at Buddha who was looking resplendant (years of penance does add a radiance to the face!). He started abusing him for leading a life of indolence begging for food when he is so whole and hearty. He kept harangueing and through it all Buddha kept smiling and had a pleasant face. After a while, the rich man stopped and asked him, ' you don't seem upset at all?'.
Buddha said, 'Suppose you donate me a cow and I refuse to accept it, who does it belong?' The rich man answered, ' Of course, it belongs to me'. 'So there, I refuse to accept all those harsh words that you showered on me', Buddha responded. The rich man was so shame faced he invited him inside his house, treated him to a sumptuous meal and begged for forgiveness. The moral of the story is this. If you are convinced that you have a point, it shouldn't matter if someone accuses you of being a 50 center. Equally, members on this forum are smart enough to know when you make a sensible point and when you dont. My experience is that they learn to ignore if you have nothing sensible to contribute. Of course if you are argumentative and compound it by being abrasive towards other posters, without being sensible (trolling, as they say) the admins always intervene.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 29 Oct 2015 22:33

ashi wrote:rsingh, i am sure you are a nice gentleman and all, and what you say about Indian people is very true, can you also ask amit not to *started* the conversation by calling me 50center and then went on ridiculing me and how Chinese people were?

You are simply exhibiting an anguish Chinese posters here have shown for 15 years. They come here posting some cool new stuff from PRC. They expect awe and praise. They usually get equal parts compliment and criticism, or more of the latter. That's how we are as a society. We don't really sit around to praise the good, and we're endlessly critical of faults, particularly our own. Why should you be exempt ? Chinese are more measured and guarded in this aspect. We on the other hand are not so. If you are here, you better be prepared to live with our ways, because we're not going to do things differently for you. If you just want smoke blown up your rear, you are better off on a Pakistani forum where they will all fall over each other to praise you more. Have you seen our politics thread ? We elected a very popular Prime Minister and lots of us now moan about everything he can't seem to do as they think he should do.

The anatomy of the life of the average Chinese poster here is to come here posting something cool in China. Lots of people respond, with plenty of criticism thrown in. Chinese poster gets angry and mocks us back. We mock him back calling him a 50center or something. Now you have two choices - appreciate how we are critical and that the critical thought process is how we work, and live with it. Or go into a death spiral of fighting our ways, the end result being you get quietly taken out and shot, because you're contributing little new and some new Chinese poster will come and replace you anyway. So, your choice.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 29 Oct 2015 22:37

Bloody hell...that 5-year plan thing. Something is seriously wrong in Beijing.

johneeG · Post by **johneeG** » 29 Oct 2015 22:51

Honestly, I appreciate what the Chinese have achieved so far and I hope that Bhaarath is inspired by their rise.

Lets see the positives and negatives in the Chinese story.
Positives:
- Geographic expansion: Manchuria, Tibet and Mongolia have been annexed. And now they are creating Islands in south-china sea and claiming Arunachal.
- Manufacturing sector to rival the west in most areas. The chinese have been able to create software versions for most of the western companies.
- Domestic Military-Industrial Complex and a huge army.

Negatives:
- cultural revolution of Mao killing many chinese
- lack of democracy and political freedom internally
- lack of social freedoms internally(eg: 1 child policy and sweat shops)
- scaring away all the neighbours who can form an anti-China alliance.
- killing Tibetans and others and imposing Han culture on them.

So, as a country China has increased in power and position thus far. Individual Chinese and others seem to have been the victims in this rise. But, largely, China's rise has been peaceful compared to the rise of European powers during Colonial era. I hope Bhaarath rises without making victims of common masses.

gashish · Post by **gashish** » 29 Oct 2015 23:02

Singha wrote:>> lock,stock, & barrel copy of western, hollywood-style wedding (white gown and tuxedos and all) minus priest and church, of course,

yes I was wondering about that. I thought it was used by converted christians onlee but you say its used by all?

even the deracinated sickulars in india , do fall back on their traditional dresses for weddings and funerals.

japan also seems to obsessed with western suits. they are biggest market for armani suits one hears. their traditional clothes look so much better.

I attended a wedding of one of my colleagues, and it was all hollywood-style. He was not christian. This piqued my interest, so I asked around and learnt most urban chinese have this kind of ceremony. I know Japanese for sure have two ceremonies, one traditional and other western. Not sure if Chinese have traditional ceremonies where guests are invited (a laowai (foreginer), like me would not have been invited to traditional ceremony, if they indeed have one).

This is byproduct of Mao's cultural revolution where all old customs, culture were destroyed and derided to usher in new "modern" system. We can still see the hangover of that in ashi's response above. Once the old cultural roots are uprooted, and new customs are borrowed and adapted, you get this bizarre concoctions.

From wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

The start of the Cultural Revolution brought huge numbers of Red Guards to Beijing, with all expenses paid by the government, and the railway system was in turmoil. The revolution aimed to destroy the "Four Olds" (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) and establish the corresponding "Four News", and this can ranged from changing of names and cutting of hair, to the ransacking of homes, vandalizing cultural treasures, and desecrating temples.[93] In a few years, countless ancient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books, and paintings were destroyed by Red Guards. The status of traditional Chinese culture and institutions within China was also severely damaged as a result of the Cultural Revolution, and the practice of many traditional customs weakened.

amit · Post by **amit** » 29 Oct 2015 23:51

Suraj wrote:
ashi wrote:rsingh, i am sure you are a nice gentleman and all, and what you say about Indian people is very true, can you also ask amit not to *started* the conversation by calling me 50center and then went on ridiculing me and how Chinese people were?
You are simply exhibiting an anguish Chinese posters here have shown for 15 years. They come here posting some cool new stuff from PRC. They expect awe and praise. They usually get equal parts compliment and criticism, or more of the latter. That's how we are as a society. We don't really sit around to praise the good, and we're endlessly critical of faults, particularly our own. Why should you be exempt ? Chinese are more measured and guarded in this aspect. We on the other hand are not so. If you are here, you better be prepared to live with our ways, because we're not going to do things differently for you. If you just want smoke blown up your rear, you are better off on a Pakistani forum where they will all fall over each other to praise you more. Have you seen our politics thread ? We elected a very popular Prime Minister and lots of us now moan about everything he can't seem to do as they think he should do.

The anatomy of the life of the average Chinese poster here is to come here posting something cool in China. Lots of people respond, with plenty of criticism thrown in. Chinese poster gets angry and mocks us back. We mock him back calling him a 50center or something. Now you have two choices - appreciate how we are critical and that the critical thought process is how we work, and live with it. Or go into a death spiral of fighting our ways, the end result being you get quietly taken out and shot, because you're contributing little new and some new Chinese poster will come and replace you anyway. So, your choice.

I deliberately did not respond to Ashi's last provocative post where he cited me by name as there's no point in it. However, Suraj did bring up an important point.

Just to give an illustration, in my interaction with Ashi, he held on to the 50-center comment but my other comments seem to have washed off him completely:

Believe it or not there is genuine interest in that country and a considerable degree of admiration on it's achievements. And all this on a forum on which there is a lot of jingoism with regard to India.

and:

Look Alibaba is an amazing success story. Let that success stand on its merits and don't try to use to cover the other deficiencies in the Chinese system.

When you have a Chinese poster posting in a very jingoistic Indian forum about China, it would be assumed that the poster is trying to highlight Chinese achievements and correct misconceptions if any. Now for the former that is achievement tracking, thanks to the speed of light and good Chinese image management (I don't say this in any negative sense) all achievement are usually well known to the Internet savvy crowd.

With regards to misconceptions, one can have a debate on this. But this debate has to be based on facts and figures. Also, I'm in no way implying that folks here know everything about the Chinese economy and we are certainly willing to learn.

However, if you try sell a lemon by saying Chinese e-commerce retail success is the reason that shopping malls are closing down in China and NOT because the retail industry in general is doing poorly, well then you have to expect someone will go and check the numbers wouldn't you?

E-commerce accounts for less than 8 per cent of overall Chinese retail. I pointed that out to Ashi and well he wasn't very pleased was he?

amit · Post by **amit** » 29 Oct 2015 23:58

ashi wrote:I am not so hanging on to something that is so past tense. The world is moving and changing. Pick tradionarl clothes as an example. The style of traditional clothes is not stationary in the last thousands years and itself keeps evolving. And most of the traditional clothes is not even convenient for modern daily work, or even going to bathroom.

It's good to move along with the times.

But while at it, why marry at all when the most modern thing to do is to live together? Why go through hassles of an ancient tradition with all its attendant cost and legal bindings when you can just pack a suitcase or two and move into an apartment?

More seriously, even in economic parlance if you cut your roots you become rootless. You'll notice that the European and US economies are not rootless and they have grown up based on their cultural norms. Ditto for the Japanese economic system and to a large extent the South Korean system.

China as a society should embrace modernity and shape it according to Chinese values and not shape Chinese values in the image of modernity as sold to them by the US and Europeans. Just my humble opinion.

ashi · Post by **ashi** » 30 Oct 2015 07:55

amit wrote:
It's good to move along with the times.

But while at it, why marry at all when the most modern thing to do is to live together? Why go through hassles of an ancient tradition with all its attendant cost and legal bindings when you can just pack a suitcase or two and move into an apartment?

More seriously, even in economic parlance if you cut your roots you become rootless. You'll notice that the European and US economies are not rootless and they have grown up based on their cultural norms. Ditto for the Japanese economic system and to a large extent the South Korean system.

China as a society should embrace modernity and shape it according to Chinese values and not shape Chinese values in the image of modernity as sold to them by the US and Europeans. Just my humble opinion.

The problem of your debating is you bringing in a lot of unrelated stuff (and provocative sometimes) and cloud the topics.

This is simple logic: US has lower percentage of e-commerce compare to the total retail sales, yet seeing a lot of malls going failure(data provided). Now China has higher percentage of e-commerce. What does that imply? Should be more malls go busted. Right? Instead of discussing the data and reasoning, you bring in many stuff including this:

On the other hand, I need to consider another point. As long as China is apparently doing better than the US, then no loss of face, even if a two bit economy such as the UK does better.

You folks look at the US with the same prism with which Pakistan looks at India. No wonder the taller than mountains, deeper than oceans, sweeter than honey relationship!

If you want to prove China's economic growth slump is the major factor, you could certainly provide data and make a point of it. Instead you keep going left and right talking about unrelated stuff.

But while at it, why marry at all when the most modern thing to do is to live together? Why go through hassles of an ancient tradition with all its attendant cost and legal bindings when you can just pack a suitcase or two and move into an apartment?

Marriage is still a norm of the society, isn't it? It may change in the future who knows, just like we human change from matriarchal society to monogamy. Argument going extreme is just weak argument.

In real life you are probably a very intelligent person. But you are letting your "jingonism“ get in your way of debate here.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 30 Oct 2015 09:18

China's 'Leftover Women'

The term 'Leftover Woman' was first coined in a report by the Chinese Women's Federation in 2007 to describe young females in their late 20s who had not yet married.

The phrase quickly gained momentum, finding its place among popular colloquial terms such as 'Gaofushuai' (a rich, tall and handsome male) and 'Baifumei' (a pale-skinned, wealthy young woman).

But while the label is relatively new, its message isn't.

China's foremost ancient thinker, Confucius, wrote "the Chinese girl was brought up, then as now, with matrimony in view as her goal" and "the woman follows the man. In her youth she follows her father and elder brother; when married, she follows her husband; when her husband is dead, she follows her son."

According to these tenets, marriage in China had less to do with romantic love, and more with filial duty and societal stability.

Hundreds of years later, China has modernised, and women, according to Mao, "hold up half the sky", but most still face harsh judgments for remaining unmarried past a certain age.

"There's a sense of failure. People would just assume that there must be a problem with you. That it's your fault," says Zhang.

Pressures within

But the pressure to marry doesn't just come from external sources. For some, it is self-inflicted.

Twenty-seven-year-old Li Yuan was so desperate to rid herself of the 'leftover' label, that she says she practically stopped eating.

"I wanted to be normal, to get married and have a baby. I think even if you are very beautiful, and you're not married you’re still pitiful because it means no man admires you," says Li.

Speaking from her modest but tidy bedroom in Beijing's southeast, Li explains that she was born in China's poor Qinghai province and raised in Hebei, a rural area not far from Beijing.

"Because of the one-child policy my mother actually went to Qinghai to give birth to me and avoid punishment because she already had a son," she says.

amit · Post by **amit** » 30 Oct 2015 09:19

Ashi,
Thank you for thinking that I am "probably an intelligent" person. You made my day.

I think I'll mention it in my CV!

However, I must say I'm getting more and more impressed with your debating and reasoning skills and of course intelligence. You've blown away the probability factor!

A lesser mind than yours would have concluded that shopping malls in BOTH China and US were doing bad because folks were not buying due to economic uncertainty.

It takes exceptional "genius" to conclude that e-commerce, which is just around 8-9 per cent of China's roughly $3.5 trillion retail market is causing shopping malls to close AND not current economic conditions and reckless over building. In the US, retail is around $4.5-5 trillion and e-commerce is about 6-7 per cent. Which would make the US number in absolute dollars bigger than the Chinese number. Then factor in population 300 million vs a vs 1.2 billion. Now imagine the per capita spend in BOTH countries for overall retails spend and e-commerce retail spend. By now you will get the idea. Just jumping up and down with: Hey look we've got Alibaba isn't going to impress any one.

Anyway no more wasting time on this from me. I've made my point several times.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 30 Oct 2015 10:08

ashi wrote:In real life you are probably a very intelligent person. But you are letting your "jingonism“ get in your way of debate here.

Please stop issuing certificates to others. You're not qualified to do so here.

Gus · Post by **Gus** » 30 Oct 2015 12:51

Just as reference- at least around my area, reception is westernized coat suit boot etc but marriage is still very traditional. The richer you are the more traditional you get. We are not that rich, but ours was even more traditional than the more prevalent Vedic fire yagna Brahmin priest marriage.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Oct 2015 15:51

my place is very humid. I refused to wear suit or tie for my reception and just went with long pant and full sleeve shirt. actual fire marriage was in silk kurta and dhoti as usual. I still have two coats lying unused in my cupboard after 15 yrs

http://www.financialexpress.com/article ... rt/158871/

there is typo - read billion for million

China has over taken the US to become the world’s largest online retail market as its E-commerce revenues grossed USD 439 million last year constituting 7 per cent of its GDP, according to a new report.

The internet has become a critical element of China’s economic progress in the past five years, accounting for seven per cent of the world’s second largest economy’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014, a percentage point higher than the US, state-run Global Times reported, citing a report issued by China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC).

China has exceeded the US to become the world’s largest online retail market, it said as the online retail transactions reached 2.79 billion yuan (USD 439 million) in 2014, one of the key economic achievements of China’s Internet development during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15).

However, according to US journal Statista, US online sales last years accounted to about USD 290 billion.
....

In 2014, the number of online shoppers climbed to 361 million, representing 55.7 per cent of the nation’s shoppers.

Online shopping represents 20 per cent of all consumer demand, the report said. For the first time mobile phones have become the most commonly-used platform to access the internet, followed by computers. Some 594 million people in China can access to the Internet through mobile phones.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Oct 2015 15:57

india has reach about 350 million internet users in mid 2015, with 60% from mobile
http://indianexpress.com/article/techno ... ers-iamai/

“The Internet in India took more than a decade to move from 10 million to 100 million and 3 years from 100 to 200 million. However, it took only a year to move from 200 to 300 million users -

---
http://indianexpress.com/article/techno ... le-report/
per this report we would be approaching 100 mil online shoppers (mostly from mobile) in another few months.

that kind of explains why Alibaba and Softbank have been throwing a lot of money here even on a marginal play (4th comer to the e-commerce fight like paytm.....amazon,flipkart and snapdeal are superior and more deep set in all respects vs paytm which is just starting out)

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Oct 2015 16:02

ofcourse paytm is having a real party at others expenses

first they changed course from bill payment and mobile wallet to ecommerce,
then their website and tech is nothing to write home about (even snapdeal looks polished vs paytm which shows you how low the bar is), people say they have worst customer service and return policy of the four.
but undeterred by all and on back of huge alibaba backing, they have gone and sponsored the indian cricket team contract and announced deep discount diwali sales with site matching whatever discount the OEM offers for 200% benefit

time will tell if they cling on or flame out. i have done some study on amazon EC2 and their cloud's public APIs....amazing piece of work...shows world class minds at work....their ecommerce internals will be similarly well stocked and a deep SW pipeline. it will be hard for even flipkart to just wing it....which might explain why they are hiring high profile people right and left. just trading will not keep them in the game vs amazon, they have to go deep into technology.

Suraj · Post by **Suraj** » 30 Oct 2015 22:12

Horrors of one-child policy leave deep scars in Chinese society

His wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the group of people barged into his home and took her away. He followed them to the local hospital, where — against medical advice and despite his pleadings — they jammed a needle into her belly.

“They grabbed my wife’s body like they were grabbing a pig, four or five people holding her hands and legs and head, and injected a shot into her belly,” the man said, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. “Neither my wife nor I signed any consent form.”

Ten hours later, she gave birth to a boy, wriggling and faintly crying. But the doctors in southern Hunan province would not even let her hold the dying infant, the husband said, putting the baby in a plastic bag and instructing him to pay a cleaner a small sum to bury it on a nearby hill.

The incident happened not during the horrors of some Mao Zedong-inspired mania in the 1950s or 1960s, but in 2011, in the Internet age and when China was walking proudly on the global stage as a major power.

On Thursday, China’s Communist Party announced it was abandoning its unpopular one-child policy after 35 years. But the scars still run deep.

In 2012 alone, official statistics show 6.7 million women in China were forced to have abortions under the one-child policy. Rates in previous decades often topped 10 million a year. As a result, experts say, suicide rates among women in China are significantly higher than among men in contrast to global norms.

Unimaginable numbers of girls are secretly aborted or killed in infancy every year by parents seeking boys, skewing the sex ratio dramatically.

In the past four decades, hundreds of millions of men and women have been forcibly sterilized or have intrauterine devices inserted under Chinese family planning policies.

The vast majority of people are still scared to speak out, but many, including some of the cadres involved in enforcing the policy, feel bitter to this day.

Yayavar · Post by **Yayavar** » 30 Oct 2015 23:07

^^ sad and scary.
There is an incident of simple brutality of an abortion in Ma Jian's Red Dust - travels in early 80's in China countryside that chilled me. The Chinese for the last 100 years have really self-inflicted tortures on themselves. The health worker just does it because he gets his pay that way. And it adds up.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 31 Oct 2015 00:00

Truly a monstrous system. How can anyone defend this horror show!
The worst part is this craziness continues, after all it is a 2 child policy. So what happens to the third child? Why see above....

amit · Post by **amit** » 31 Oct 2015 00:21

^^^^^
This happens when the cultural moorings of a society is destroyed. Everything is decided by a bloody committee and then they make a Tom & Jerry type cartoon about it like the one on the five year plan.

China has grown spectacurly buy over the past 30 years but at what cost?

Next to this, Sanjay Gandhi's forced sterilization program in the 1970s was almost humanitarian. The incident described above is chilling. They put the still breathing baby in a plastic bag! Gosh and this kind of thing probably happened thousands of times over the years. In India this kind of incident would have people out on the streets baying for blood.

No wonder Chinese posters are so obsessed with the success stories. If they take their eyes off them guess what they would see

gashish · Post by **gashish** » 31 Oct 2015 01:20

^^ The issues mentioned in Chinese "Leftover" women article are probably true and relevant in most of the other nations and cultures too.

China's foremost ancient thinker, Confucius, wrote "the Chinese girl was brought up, then as now, with matrimony in view as her goal" and "the woman follows the man. In her youth she follows her father and elder brother; when married, she follows her husband; when her husband is dead, she follows her son."

According to these tenets, marriage in China had less to do with romantic love, and more with filial duty and societal stability.

Hundreds of years later, China has modernised, and women, according to Mao, "hold up half the sky", but most still face harsh judgments for remaining unmarried past a certain age.

"There's a sense of failure. People would just assume that there must be a problem with you. That it's your fault," says Zhang.

If there are any positive outcomes of of mao's revolution, it got to be this, empowerment of women, besides breaking of feudal structures. Anecdotally, I saw lot of women in corporate offices, as taxi drivers, petrol pump attendants, bus drivers, security guards etc. The airport security personnel in china who pat and frisk are often women..

the day we have women frisking men at the airport in India, we have truly arrived..

Participation of women in the workforce -blue collar and white collar is miles ahead of India, and even the US. In fact, if I recall correctly (dont have the link handy) at executive and board-room level positions China does much much better than the US.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.FE.ZS

If we get the participation rate from absymal 27% to world average (~50%), i am sure we will add 1-2% to our GDP growth.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 31 Oct 2015 21:03

^^^^
This high womens participation is possible in part due to the policy above. Women have few dependents...

People don't understand just how unusual China's dependency ratio is right now. It is giant country of workers with few children and few old people. This has never happened before in history for any large country! Imagine India up and eliminated 300 million of its children tomorrow. We too would have those sterling savings rates that would trigger all the wild spending that has accompanied it. I keep trying to remind people of this but it is easy to overlook.

So every time you see the HSR or a fancy propoganda picture of Guangdong, remember it is built on the elimination of 1/2-2/3 of China's own children...
Imagine the average child costs say $5,000 per year to clothe, feed, educate, child care, healthcare, etc in China. 300 million x $5,000 = $1.5 Trillion. Every year. this roughly the money China is spraying around like there is no tomorrow. You know what population wise, there is no tomorrow....

Or as one China critic put it, the words sister, brother, aunt, uncle have disappeared from the language....

Rishirishi · Post by **Rishirishi** » 01 Nov 2015 08:15

Here is a tale from reality. My business freind in China.

He is married to a girl and both are single child in their family. Hence they got 4 old people to cater for.

They have a single daughter. The daughter has 2 parents and 4 grandparents, she is the only child for. No uncle or aunts, no cousins. Imagine what this does to the childs psycology.

On her sholder she has the responsibility of 2 parents and up to 4 grandparents who may live on to see 80+.

gashish · Post by **gashish** » 01 Nov 2015 10:21

^^ very common for anybody who is born in 80s or later.

They passed a law in 2013 for that too..

China law forces adult children to visit and care for their elderly parents

Percentage of elderly living by themselves or in institutional-care is on rise and bound to pick up pace..

Impact on other end is so-called china's spoilt generation

Excessive pampering from 2 parents and 4 grandparents with the child at the center of household has purportedly resulted in Little Emperor Syndrome...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Emperor_Syndrome

Businesses/companies catering to this "emperor" segment (toys, clothes, milk/infant formula, other baby products etc) made killing over last 3 decades, now its turn for the ones who target "senior-care"

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 01 Nov 2015 13:16

The demographic situation must be a total shytefest... Much worse than we know. Or else this fundamental change would not have been made.

ashi · Post by **ashi** » 01 Nov 2015 13:47

Suraj wrote: You are simply exhibiting an anguish Chinese posters here have shown for 15 years. They come here posting some cool new stuff from PRC. They expect awe and praise. They usually get equal parts compliment and criticism, or more of the latter. That's how we are as a society. We don't really sit around to praise the good, and we're endlessly critical of faults, particularly our own. Why should you be exempt ? Chinese are more measured and guarded in this aspect. We on the other hand are not so. If you are here, you better be prepared to live with our ways, because we're not going to do things differently for you. If you just want smoke blown up your rear, you are better off on a Pakistani forum where they will all fall over each other to praise you more. Have you seen our politics thread ? We elected a very popular Prime Minister and lots of us now moan about everything he can't seem to do as they think he should do.

The anatomy of the life of the average Chinese poster here is to come here posting something cool in China. Lots of people respond, with plenty of criticism thrown in. Chinese poster gets angry and mocks us back. We mock him back calling him a 50center or something. Now you have two choices - appreciate how we are critical and that the critical thought process is how we work, and live with it. Or go into a death spiral of fighting our ways, the end result being you get quietly taken out and shot, because you're contributing little new and some new Chinese poster will come and replace you anyway. So, your choice.

The so called 50centers post the other side of the stories that you don't want to hear, and often they are right. That's why folks like you are so upset. From 15 years ago to today, from Shanghai statistics, Chinese banks will fail, does Chine matter, China's growth will haul in 2008 ...

When you folks see something you don't like then you mock and start a flame war. Haven't see even a single discussion that can go peacefully. So seemingly posting news will be a way to go. Yet you think that's no good either because it is not the news you want to hear.

Me being shot and taken out? Sure, go ahead. Another Chinese poster will come here and replace me? Don't flatter yourself and the importance of this forum. So Suraj, here is my birdie to you! LoL ...

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Nov 2015 18:17

Telegraph.co.UK.....
PMI figures show factory production declining again, raising more fears about global demand

The Chinese economy has continued to struggle despite repeated efforts to stimulate activity, according to official data, raising the prospect of further measures from Beijing if the country is to reach its growth targets.

China's enormous manufacturing sector surprisingly contracted for the third consecutive month in October, while its services sector - the economy's growth engine - expanded at the slowest rate since 2008's financial crisis.

The figures raise new fears that growth in the world's second-biggest economy could fall below 7pc this year, after official data last month showed expansion of 6.9pc in the year to September. Weak demand in China has already had a huge effect on the world economy, potentially delaying interest rate rises and hitting commodity prices.

The country's central bank has repeatedly cut bank lending requirements in an attempt to boost growth and ward off deflation, but economists suggested the new figures could herald further measures

zengerl · Post by **zengerl** » 02 Nov 2015 05:27

Well, the situation is contrary. Chinese know the outside world, while the outside world does not know China at all. The western media is always trying to find speckles in China with huge magnifiers. China has been taking overwhelming critique from the outside for decades. And if you know some Chinese, please visit website such as www.tianya.cn, you will find the criticism prevailing there. I don't know about India, but it is far more free than US. In US, there are so many topics you do not wish to talk, which might even get you out of job and put in prison, such as race, religion (and now, be careful of criticizing Obama, otherwise you will be labelled as a racist, which will definitely put you in huge trouble).

zengerl · Post by **zengerl** » 02 Nov 2015 05:41

India is proud of her democracy and looks down upon China's "dictatorship". Well,

1. "Democracy" does not do economy much good. China was once lagging behind Indian, In 1950s', China's GDP per person was 2/3 of India's, China's railway system has tracks with a length of 1/5 of India's, China China's roads are a fraction of India's, birth death in "China was much higher than India's; Now, GDP per person in China is 5 times of India's, China's has more railways and high ways than India ......

2. China's political system is different from US and other countries, but it is "democracy", people are enjoy rights equivalent to western countries. Political systems can be different. Strictly speaking, none of the countries in the world today has a "democratic" ruling, which means the ruling system in Ancient Athens, where everything is discussed and voted in a "ecclesia" formed by all male citizens of the city state. The political system in US and other western countries today are more like "republic" in ancient Rome.

3. "Democracy" is not the best, not to say perfect, system, it has its drawbacks, otherwise, the "democratic" Greek would not have been defeated by Alexander and later by Rome. Do you know why Socrates was put to death? Because he "opposed" democracy and supported "Atheism".