China news, memes, and shitposts

Chinese clothing manufacturer Shein discovers that American influencers are very gullible. (Or at least willing to pretend to be gullible if it gets them a free vacation.)

https://www.thecut.com/2023/06/shein-is-treating-workers-even-worse-than-you-thought.html

https://www.wonkette.com/fashion-influencers-go-on-fake-ass-trip-to-fake-ass-shein-factory

Twitter thread analyzing the photos:

https://twitter.com/susancashmere/status/1672296510518640654

Analysis: Xi reprimanded by elders at Beidaihe over direction of nation

Sources said that at this year’s gathering, a group of retired party elders reprimanded the top leader in ways they had not until now.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Pi...y-elders-at-Beidaihe-over-direction-of-nation

Whole lot of rumors, I’ve heards and other Krimlinology* going on but that is generally the case with opaque authoritarian regimes. Still worth a read IMO.

*Do we have a Chinese equivalent word?

Interesting read from the former head of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (and who has lived there since 1997).

No hope China will rejoin the world, top Beijing-based businessman says

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe...g-based-businessman-says-20230904-p5e1yp.html

Let's see how many of those elders die of "natural causes" in the next three months.

CCPology?

So news out of China is bad. I mean, across the board bad, but in the property sector, it looks like a total wipe out, on a scale that makes the 2007-8 US financial crisis look like a hiccup.

34 of the top 50 Chinese developers are in default of their debt. Evergrande, their 2nd largest developer, may be liquidated soon, with loses of $82 billion in the last two years, and debt over $350 billion right now. They've been suspended on the stock market for 18 monthss, but they just let them back on this month.

But China's economy isn't like one in the west. It's almost all investment and capital driven. But they also don't let money out of the country for investment.

So other than a small market in speculating on precious metals, the overwhelming majority of Chinese with wealth have that wealth in investment properties.

But they have massively over developed. One Chinese official released a report that estimated that the number of real estate properties that are available for purchase in China for living is three times higher than the actual number of the Chinese population.

So if the Chinese property market crashes, it could wipe out virtually their entire middle class.

Perhaps they can hold it together with tape and mirrors, but this has the potential to be the next great depression as the entire economy of China collapses. And the fact that it impacts almost every Chinese person with wealth could destablize the entire country.

The US has been trying to rapidly build back our own industrialization capacity, but we aren't there yet, and we still need some manufacturing in China to get there, as we've destroyed our own capacity.

A couple national security podcasts I follow had China episodes come out yesterday/today.


Nick sat down with Evan Medeiros, Thomas Shugart and Emily Weinstein to take stock of where U.S.-Chinese relations stand today and where they might be going. Can President Biden’s diplomatic push pay off? How will Taiwan’s elections and Beijing’s internal shakeup change the equation? What lessons is President Xi Jinping actually learning from the invasion of Ukraine? And can the U.S. and China ultimately find a stable floor for their bilateral relationship or are they headed toward conflict?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/war-on-the-rocks/id682478916



Eric and Eliot welcome Leland Miller, a non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on Strategy and Security and co-founder & CEO of China Beige Book International. Lee explains how China Beige Book acquires data on the PRC economy as well as the pitfalls of using official Chinese government data. They discuss both the short and longer run prospects for China’s economy, the specific dysfunctions of one man rule of managing a large economy, the question of whether or not we have seen “peak China” and if that will make the PRC more or less aggressive vis a vis Taiwan. They consider whether an invasion or blockade of the island is more likely and why any of this should matter to the broader American public.

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shield-of-the-republic/id1589548143

Le Keqiang, the previous prime minister and associate of Xi's political rivals, dies at 68 of a heart attack (Bloomberg)

Heart attack. Sure, Jan.

Xi is in full purge mode. But this time it isn't political rivals it's his own loyalists. The Defense Minister and Foreign Ministers have both disappeared - and both were elevated to their positions in the last year, replacing the last people that Xi made disappear.

Xi has destroyed most of the intelligentsia of China. The Politboro is now made up of small town bureaucrats that he worked with coming up in the party, and there only qualification is personal loyalty to Xi.

The entire leadership of the PLA's 'rocket force' which is dominated by it's nuclear weapon program have disappeared. They have officially been replaced by officers outside of the technical training of that highly specialized branch of the army. This is the first time wide spread changes have been made and the people put in charge were not from within the program.

This coincides with dozens of top financial ministers either going silent, being removed or disappearing entirely. Those with ties to the West are being replaced at a dramatically high number.

https://www.politico.eu/article/chinas-paranoid-purge-xi-jinping-li-keqiang-qin-gang-li-shangfu/

https://www.reuters.com/world/china...lks-with-top-creditors-break-down-2024-01-29/

The Chinese Stock Market has lost $6 trillion in the last 3 years.

Chinese stocks are the worst performers in the world so far this year.

Chinese investors are barred from investing outside their economy, so the two largest sectors they invest in are real estate and stocks. Both are in free fall.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/23/investing/china-stock-market-losses-explained/index.html

All of this has happened before......

Is it possible Xi is actually a really shitty leader who doesn't really know what he's doing

The intelligentsia? Is that what we're calling the US spy network now?

Why is that dumb, @RickDeckard ? Are you not aware of the Sufan movement?

Tankies gonna tank.

No, I am. It's the acceptance of the idea that the current ruler has "destroyed most of the intelligentsia" which is just mind-bogglingly stupid.

Why? It's no secret that Xi has purged millions of officials, from top party members to lowly bureaucrats, since he came to power in 2012 but I'd have to do more reading to find out exactly the scope of this intelligentsia claim. It does seem to support the notion that he is a deeply paranoid man that values loyalty from fools over support from sound minded officials

They say that "heart attack in a pool" in China is akin to "fell out of a window" in Russia

Click the link and watch the video because the context only makes it worse (for Cotton).



https://x.com/nbcnews/status/1752761046593401197

This is why Republicans are increasingly saying public hearings aren’t useful and everything needs to be done behind closed doors.

Watch both videos and tell me which one is three decade old satire of a rural Texan and which one was this morning and a Harvard educated Senator from Oklahoma.

I’m gonna go the other way and say this guy is definitely an agent for the CCP

This isn't the 1950's. Like it or not, China is now an advanced industrial economy in good part. The idea that such a society could "destroy" its intellectuals and remain remotely functional is absurd. And despite being a hit-piece mixing tantrum about the aforementioned destruction of the US spy network with innuendo and red-scare, the article referred to doesn't even claim that. It's just the whole-cloth invention of a poster with a less than familiar relationship with truth.

And before I have to confront the inevitable strawmen...
No, I'm not a Maoist. No, this doesn't mean that China is a nice place to live. No, this doesn't mean that there haven't been purges. No, this doesn't mean that said purges can't have caused any kind of wobble in economic performance.

No, you are just mind boggingly stupid. This isn't new, though I suppose people who get most of their news from the World Socialist Website haven't heard about the systemic problems.

China's economy is not just wobbling, it's being held up by denial. Their largest real estate corporation was just ordered to be dismantled as it can't match it's debts. It has somewhere between 1.5-3 billion housing units that have never been lived in because they just kept building them when there wasn't any need. They just had the largest urbanization project in history, which has cratered birth rates, on top of their one China policy. Their stock market is plummeting. Western investment has fled. Their demographics are collapsing due to horrible policies mandated by an authoritarian government.

And what you don't seem to realize is that the technological bases of many of these societies is limited. China can't produce top line computer chips, which is why when the US, Taiwan and the other advanced economies simply stopped selling them to China they simply had no recourse. No, China isn't going to be a world leader in AI in a decade. The West said no thank you.

Add that to Chairman Xi literally removing on the order of 1 million civil servants from the bureaucracy that makes this economy run, they are in deep shit. When you replace competent people BECAUSE they are competent, and that competence poses a threat, then you get the loyal but barely competent ones running things.

This IS literally the biggest purge in Chinese technical acumen since the 1950s.

The fact that doesn't match your ideology and you refuse to accept it is on you.

Their stock market just lost more wealth than your entire nation produces - in 12 years. Your entire GDP. For 12 years.

Yeah, it's a 'wobble.' What a fucking moron.

China is on the verge of economic and demographic collapse.

I don’t think people understand how dire the situation is.

It’s like Japan’s demographic retreat but actually even more of a steep drop off.

Oh, and with per capita GDP being $14k and not $40k.

You can be young without money but you can't be old without it. You've got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you've got to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can't be old and without it. - That's the truth.​

I'm gonna split the difference here and say that, despite the sensational predictions of Peter Zeihan et al., it's self-indulgent and naive for the West to count on China's collapse. It could go either way. It may also be overstated to say that Chinese government is hollowed of talent, or that Xi is a one-man show of governance.

Never get high on your own supply, guys.

I look forward to the collapse of the CCP any day now!

Uh-huh.

The Cultural Revolution lasted from 1966 to Mao's death in 1976. It involved a rolling series of purges, millions of murders by the state and around 125 million people subjected to re-education - with a particular focus on intellectuals.

That sure sounds astonishing, until you look and see that the Chinese stock market has been wildly vacillating for decades. The losses you describe are over the last three years and barely rate as a blip in the overall trend. The below chart only goes to 2022 but the current index as of today is 2,730.
Obviously there have been several peaks and troughs much more dramatic than the current one.



And as we know well, the stock market is not the economy. The current predictions from the IMF (not a body given to support for communism) for 2024 are for 4.6% growth, a figure that western politicians would be ecstatic about, but representing a moderate slowdown in growth for China.

Their recourse has been to attempt to improve their own capabilities. They have made some progress with that (despite the supposed destruction of most of their intellectual class!) so the policy of trying to isolate them may well turn out to have been a mistake.

I do not deny "systemic problems". I deny the laughable representation of an extant or imminent collapse. And you're just about the most blindly devoted state apparatchik there is.

Meanwhile, back in reality, more news about major Chinese figures disappearing.

Missing Chinese Billionaire financier Bao Fan has his company say he is retiring for 'health reasons.' He has not been seen for over a year at this point. Bao Fan is one of the richest men in China and serviced the top three Chinese 'corporations,' including Ali Baba.

Previously, they said:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68177941

Jack Ma, Chinese wealthiest man, also disappeared for 3 months right on the verge of his largest IPO. He has never explained his absence, or the reason why his IPO was then shelved. He did give a speech slightly critical of Chinese government policy right before he disappeared from view. Many analysts believe that he felt the need to be out of the public view due to pressure from the Chinese communist party.

"There are [Communist] party committees there to remind the companies... that the party ultimately has power, even over powerful individuals like Jack Ma," says Samantha Hoffman, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

This control extends to secrecy, she says.

"Not only is a company responsible to do what the party demands, but they also can't admit to doing that if they're asked."

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56448688

Chinese debt to GDP ratio grew to it's largest ever, at 288% of GDP, last year, and is worse than the US. The only major economy that is worse is Japan - which famously was supposed to 'buy up' and 'pass' the US economy in the 80s and 90s and then has been stagnate for the last 30 years.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/China-s-debt-to-GDP-ratio-climbs-to-record-287.8-in-2023

And we'll see how China responds to their largest real estate corporation being carved up.

To categorize their current systemic issues as 'a wobble' is just an amazing level of denial of reality.

At best we are seeing stagnation, and we've gone from all the analysts saying this will be the Chinese Century like the 20th century was the American one to China despite being 4 times as populated won't pass the American economy for the next 60 years. And that it's population is expected to decrease from 1.3 billion to 800 million by the end of the century.

China, in a sign that always portends positive economic upturns, is scouring the internet to remove any negative stories about it's economy. They say it's a matter of 'national security.'
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-reportedly-scrubbing-internet-negative-025637401.html

I think folks might be talking past each other.

When I say they are falling off the edge of a demographic and economic cliff I don’t mean that they are going to go back to eating bark tomorrow.

I’m sayin that there is a VERY good chance that on their current trajectory they will only average 3-4% GDP growth over the next 10/15 years. BEST CASE.

Now for a western country with high per capita GDP and a growing population that would be great. I’d take that for the US.

For a country like China with a per capita GDP about $60k less than the US (14k v 76k) and who have already entered their absolute shrinking population phase those are catastrophic numbers.

Not survival numbers. Not for a totalitarian regime who depends on rapid economic growth for acceptability.

And at the moment there doesn’t seem to be any way to change course. In fact they are moving the opposite direction. Worker productivity is decreasing along with population. Neither one is good, both are horrible. Debt to GDP is astronomical especially when as big as you are your currency isn’t in a position that lets you basically get interest free loans. That’s bad because to increase worker productivity you need to either improve individual worker output (automation) or move up the tech ladder and produce more valuable goods (AKA: are you gonna make your workers work better or work on better things?). Both transitions require large amounts of capital. Foreign capital is fleeing and Xi is looking like quite an austerity guy even setting aside the debt issues discussed earlier that possibly constrain him.

But maybe I’m missing something and you know a way for them to get back to the high single digits low double MINIMUM economic growth rates needed to maintain social stability/control medium term?