
Life in China Is Getting Harder With High Prices - wei_jok
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-23/xi-s-communists-under-pressure-as-high-prices-hit-china-workers
======
Animats
The increase in pork prices is due to a swine fever epidemic that started in
Liaoning province.[1] SCMP has a reasonably good article.

China's huge boom is starting to level off. Down from 10%/yr to 7% a year. The
US is under 3%/yr. That happened to all the "Asian tigers", as they caught up
to the developed world. Its a long way from a recession.

[1] [https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
economy/article/3020488/c...](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
economy/article/3020488/chinas-pork-prices-hit-record-level-2019-due-african-
swine)

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
The problem in China is that they're likely to get old before they get rich.
China's GDP per capita is still only a quarter (or less) of Japan, Singapore
or South Korea:

[https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/japan](https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/china/japan)

~~~
freejulian85
China’s population is 4x that of the USA. It makes complete sense that their
per capita gdp is therefore less. It should remain that way.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
I was comparing to Japan, and per capita means divided by population.

~~~
freejulian85
I’m well aware what per capita means. China has 10x the people as Japan.
Resources are finite and the earth is already burdened trying to sustain 8
billion people. China wants to improve their per capita gdp? They should
reduce their population. It’s not reasonable to assume 1.4 billion people
should have the same standard of living as a country which kept their
population reasonable.

~~~
Konnstann
Considering China's GDP is based on manufacturing and export, reducing the
population will also result in productivity decreases, which would mean a
negligible change in GDP per capita, since GDP would also fall.

------
christkv
I expect China to clamp down harder and harder on its population as well as
deflect attention from it as the economy slides to try keep the party in
power. Look for the social credit system to expand even more and also more
rhetoric about it all being the fault of evil foreigners.

~~~
rqs
Hate to say it but it's already happening and getting more clear day by day. I
start to suspect all of this is intentional, including all of those trade war
"failures".

You have a threat (The trade war with USA, well and maybe South China sea etc)
and a slowing economy. Now many Chinese companies are in need of help from the
CCP government, and the help is not for free.

In Zhejiang, their government want to send "Government representatives" to
private firms[0] to "help" them on site. I will not be in total surprise if
one day all of those companies turn themselves to "State controlled".

[0] [https://www.voachinese.com/a/China-To-Send-Officials-
To-100-...](https://www.voachinese.com/a/China-To-Send-Officials-
To-100-Private-Firms-20190923/5094648.html) (Chinese, but the URL already told
the story)

~~~
throwaway2048
The idea that "free enterprise" wasn't state controlled to begin with in China
is a western illusion that a lot of people seem desperate to believe.

------
franklingu
Just another article of predicting that China is going to collapse -- these
kind of articles have been popping up since 1991.

China is just another big country with a lot of problems. So is US.

Even if China is really going to collapse, what is in it for average people in
the US or other countries? To prove that the democracy you believe is correct
-- even if that means nearly all the people in the world will suffer from
economic slowdown?

~~~
laughinghan
Why 1991? Surely such articles predate 1991.

I'm not sure why you think writers at Bloomberg, a Wall Street-oriented
outlet, represent average people in the US.

I'm also not sure why you think anyone would want China to collapse in order
to "prove democracy correct", as if to win a bet. Democracy is a means to an
end. "Average people" think that in China, though many people are doing great
under the current system, there are also people not doing great, average
people just like them, who are being oppressed, harassed for reading banned
books, punished for criticizing party officials, put into re-education labor
camps, even having their organs harvested, and they want that to stop. If
China stopped all that tomorrow without collapsing, most people would be
ecstatic about that. But they won't, and average people believe the best way
to permanently stop that kind of thing is for everyone to get a voice and a
vote in their government—indeed, for a hundred flowers to bloom, or 百花齐放, if
you will.

~~~
franklingu
> who are being oppressed, harassed for reading banned books, punished for
> criticizing party officials, put into re-education labor camps, even having
> their organs harvested

Apparently I do not believe this is happening in China and you do. Maybe I am
brainwashed by Chinese government or you are affected by all those western
media. Anyway, Chinese government cares not so much about what western media
says -- they have been saying that China is going to collapse for so many
years. Instead, Chinese government on the one hand tries to solve some of the
problems faced by China, on the other hand uses propaganda involving
patriotism and ethnic identity to unify people within. Whether this way can
work in the end is still unknown -- maybe yes, then guess fewer and fewer
people will still talk about democracy is the only way to govern the world; or
maybe not, then China is definitely be not better than Russia: before USSR's
collapse, people are poor; after its collapse, people are still poor and only
a few people benefited from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_(economics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_therapy_\(economics\))

~~~
laughinghan
I actually was careful not to say that I believe that is happening, I said
that's what "average people" think.

You asked "if China is really going to collapse, what is in it for average
people in the US or other countries?", and I hoped that you were genuinely
interested in understanding why there are people in the West who dislike the
Chinese government. Does my explanation make sense, and convince you that it's
not because they want to "prove democracy correct"?

I am also interested in what you believe is and isn't happening in China and
why. The organ harvesting reports are extreme and salacious, and I can see
believing the Vocational Training Centers are voluntary, but the others seem
obvious and undeniable? Is it not well-known in China that the government bans
certain books? Or that social media posts can be taken down on the basis of
being too critical of the party?

I'm not entirely sure why you bring up shock therapy. It's true that many
countries failed to or suffered when they liberalized their society alongside
their economies. It's also true that many countries have done it quite
successfully.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
Given China's population, a lack of economic growth could pose a real,
pressing problem to them. China has more to lose in the trade war.

------
d-d
Whether you're browsing HN or farming wild jackabees off the grid; there is no
escaping the political news machine.

~~~
billychow
It's true...

------
epiphanitus
One of the things I learned when I took Intnl econ in college was that keeping
a currency's value artificially low can boost exports, but will also put
downward pressure on real wages domestically.

Maybe that's playing a role here.

------
tarsinge
As a French the amount of (bad) news regarding China on American websites I
browse (hn, reddit, newspapers websites...) is really disturbing compared to
home. I try to think rationally but the coincidence with the trade war is hard
to ignore. As an outsider it looks like nothing has changed (China is a
communist country, fresh news!) but suddenly the media is all over it.

The media pattern now is so obvious every time there are geopolitical tensions
to justify a conflict that it's hard to ignore (please remember Irak).

I'm not a geopolitical expert, I really like Americans (obviously, otherwise I
would not be on this site), but I don't understand how nobody notice this
pattern, especially here.

~~~
UIZealot
And any time there's an article about China, people who knows nothing about
China, besides that it's ruled by the communist party, comes out of the
woodwork to take a dump on China.

People look down on Trump and ridicule him endlessly when he spews bullshit
about things he knows nothing about. But if you spew bullshit about China, you
get lots of upvotes.

------
onion2k
If the political system in China collapses _everyone_ should worry. That would
likely result in a global economic crash the likes of which the world has
never seen.

~~~
missosoup
If the alternative is China going unchecked and eating the world. I'll take
the economic crash.

I grew up in poverty and I'd rather go back to poverty than live under a
dystopian surveillance dictatorship.

~~~
spectramax
I want to imagine the world with China as a democracy only to assure the world
that xenophobia is the first thing that comes to mind when people take an
anti-China stance and as a reminder that Chinese culture, their arts, the land
and the people are wonderful. I am against this dystopian overwhelmingly
powerful and suppressive government.

I imagine if 1989 was a turning moment for Democracy in China.

~~~
missosoup
The wonderful culture and arts you're thinking about is historical. It doesn't
really exist in China now. It was mostly wiped out during The Great Leap
Forward, along with 30 million people give or take.

Fun fact: advanced Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners travel from
China to Japan to learn. Japan preserved records of the TCM knowledge that
China destroyed during the great leap.

~~~
friendlybus
GLF was terrible, but the west shares a shame in throwing away our
intellectual and cultural pursuits. There's an argument that a very long time
ago, the islamic intellectual tradition preserved enlightenment values whilst
we were off doing other things. I don't know the gritty details of the
argument, so I'd be the first to say I'm wrong.

~~~
philipov
I think you mean they preserved Greek and Roman knowledge, which was the basis
of the Renaissance. The Enlightenment was a few hundred years later, and
consisted of new ideas.

~~~
barry-cotter
They didn’t just preserve Greek and Roman knowledge. Averroes, Avicenna, the
Mutazilites, al-Razi, Maimonides, al-Farabi and others made enormous and
original contributions to philosophy, medicine, chemistry and other fields.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment would have been unrecognizably different
without the contributions of the thinkers of the Islamic world.

~~~
missosoup
Can you suggest some reading materials to those who want to know more about
this?

~~~
barry-cotter
My knowledge of this period is very shallow and mostly comes from the History
of Phiosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. Lost Enlightenment is probably the best
place to start.

[https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00F8MIJMQ/geneexpre...](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00F8MIJMQ/geneexpressio-20)

------
chloerei
I'm Chinese and live well in China. Of course, I only represent myself. If you
want to know more about China, see some Chinese travel YouTuber or come to
China yourself. Instead of believing in a media publish "The Big Hack" without
evidence.

I'm curious that HN is full of articles and comments that uglify China. Many
Chinese developer read HN to learn and integrate into the world. Now I think
Chinese understand the world more than the world understand China.

By the way, isn't this off-topic according to HN guidelines?

------
ur-whale
Paywall workaround : [http://archive.is/ErJXw](http://archive.is/ErJXw)

~~~
webda2l
Or, Inspect and add new CSS rule:

p { display: block !important }

------
howtofly
China's success proves that democracy is not the only way. These guys just
cannot accept this simple fact. LOL

~~~
puranjay
Democracy imposed on countries where the demand for it never arose organically
usually ends in failure.

The west has a biased perspective on this issue, but the idea of democracy is
not innate to vast majority of the world

