
China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen - hhs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-cenbank/china-to-inject-174-billion-of-liquidity-on-monday-as-markets-reopen-idUSKBN1ZW074
======
testfoobar
The net figure matters.

Bloomberg: "The central bank said Sunday it will use reverse repurchase
agreements to supply 1.2 trillion yuan of liquidity on Monday, with the figure
coming to 150 billion yuan ($21.7 billion) on a net basis, according to
Bloomberg calculations."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/china-s-2...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/china-s-22-billion-
injection-may-help-ease-global-market-rout?srnd=premium)

~~~
fspeech
One needs to look at this on a seasonal basis. Typically they inject a large
amount of cash before the Chinese new year and start draining it afterwards.
So the effect is larger than the net amount though maybe less than the gross
number.

------
bitxbit
They already extended the holidays and I know a lot of manufacturers rely on
pre and post Lunar production cycles. We are going to find out what happens
when China goes offline which is not going to be pretty. I fully expect some
products to run short and prices to double within days.

I also think the Chinese govt is trying to throw money at this problem. They
got caught mismanaging the epidemic and injecting money into the market isn’t
going to calm public panic. It will do the exact opposite.

~~~
taiwanboy
At this point, small foreign business operating in China will go out of
business due to supply chain shutdown and illiquidity. Mid sized businesses
will have a huge one time cost/write off moving operations out of China. Large
multinationals will move more parts of Chinese supplies to other countries.

China law blog can put it better than I can:
[https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/02/whats-going-to-
happen-w...](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/02/whats-going-to-happen-with-
my-china-dependent-supply-chain.html)

[https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/01/chinas-coronavirus-
and-...](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/01/chinas-coronavirus-and-your-
supply-chain-dealing-with-unknowns-and-false-diversification.html)

~~~
delfinom
>Large multinationals will move more parts of Chinese supplies to other
countries.

The joke is, there is perhaps no point in the next 2 weeks. If the virus so
far is as virulent as it seems, there's going to be alot more shutdown
countries coming once the incubation periods run down.

------
mark_l_watson
My wife asked me at breakfast why the new virus is such a big deal: hundreds
dying vs. the 5K to 10K babies and infants who die everyday in the world from
dehydration and/or starvation.

My response was exponential growth of viruses and mutation into something very
deadly.

China is taking the outbreak seriously, locking down large and high population
regions. I wondered if some of that is PR since after a previous outbreak they
were accused of covering up (if I remember correctly).

~~~
koheripbal
The most important thing to remember here is that we have ZERO idea how many
people are truly infected in China.

The Chinese gov't is publishing totally unreliable numbers on "confirmed".
...but the fact that confirmed cases are popping up all around the world,
there is ZERO chance that the true number of infected people is 15,000 in
China.

That just doesn't make sense statistically.

~~~
rediguanayum
The healthcare system in Wuhan is overwhelmed. The hospital are turning away
patients with symptoms without evening screening unless their deathly ill due
to a lack of resources: "Coronavirus Pummels Wuhan, a City Short of Supplies
and Overwhelmed" [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/world/asia/china-
coronavi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/world/asia/china-coronavirus-
wuhan.html) which means that the statistics are going to badly off at this
point.

------
seanmcdirmid
Having lived in Beijing for 9 years, I’m glad I’m not there right now. Not
because of a fear of getting sick, but of the sheer boredom of being stuck in
my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an appropriate face
mask. Heck, even going to the office is probably off limits right now.

~~~
capableweb
> being stuck in my apartment, nowhere to eat, drink, or even walk without an
> appropriate face mask

As someone who never been there (or in China for that matter), is "face mask"
a synonym for something or you mean literally a face mask? Don't think it's
mandatory to wear face masks, just that a lot of people do it, right?

If someone knows better, please correct me

~~~
prewett
No, literally a face mask, so that people know that you aren't going to give
them the virus. I don't know if it's mandatory to wear a face mask.

But it doesn't seem like it would be too different from what always happens in
Chinese New Year in Beijing. All the shopkeepers aren't from Beijing
originally, so they close shop for two weeks and go back to their hometown.
There's pretty much no restaurants open, except maybe chains. And people are
shooting off fireworks all day, so the air is just as polluted as always
(generally well above the level of an airport smoking lounge in the winter),
so you want to be wearing an N95 mask anyway. (Generally if you can't see the
mountains around Beijing, you should consider wearing an N95 mask)

~~~
BurningFrog
> _All the shopkeepers aren 't from Beijing originally_

Why is that?

Are the native Beijingers to rich and fancy to run a shop?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
In general Beijingers have a higher income while running a shop pays low
income, so migrant workers are the ones that mainly fill demand for such labor
(including shop keepers, waitresses, cooks, etc...).

Consider that Beijing has 21 million residents but less than 14 million hukou
holders, there is a lot of migrant labor to go around.

~~~
edoceo
Hukou, new word for me,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou)
\- short answer is like a household registration, social, caste like thing.

~~~
bane
It's your official place of residence paperwork. It can be used to limit
internal migration as many official government activities like voting or
paying taxes or whatever have to be done in the area for which your hukou is
for. Housing is also suppose to verify you have a hukou for the place you are
trying to buy/rent....that sort of thing.

~~~
Ill_ban_myself
In the west the idea of a hukou has been used by kings, lords, police,
governments big and small of all kinds for more than 1000 years.

It’s not a new idea it is one that I think most western countries would say,
“we tried it and it failed.”

For me it brings to mind racism, slavery, a good excuse for genocide.

In the west the idea of hukou isn’t “foreign” it is too familiar and ugly.
Like an alcoholic father you have left behind.

~~~
krageon
There really is no call for this sort of vitriol, especially when it isn't
really paired with any information that we might learn from what you said. If
you gave some actually tangible examples, perhaps this anger could at least be
intellectually interesting.

~~~
Ill_ban_myself
I'm not angry. As they say in America, "I have no dog in this fight."

It does not bother me in any way that the government in China gets to decide
whether and where people can travel or work or live.

I'm glad they don't do it where I live, but I am sure the average Chinese
citizen is glad they don't have to suffer many indignities and strange quirks
of western life.

I cannot, for instance, let my child play with a water gun at the public park
for fear he will be shot and killed by a police officer. I do not need to
pretend that's unquestionably good. It is certainly not the way I would prefer
to live. It is just a fact of life.

------
ttul
A friend of mine is leaving HK today - he lives there, so this is not a casual
trip abroad. He said the level of fear is making it impossible to live there
as a single person. The shops and restaurants are closed. Even his own
employer shut its doors indefinitely - and they’re just a video production
company.

The virus won’t be what ruins China. It’s the panic itself.

~~~
sytelus
So really, how bad is this? Per article less than 400 people have died in the
country with over a billion people.

~~~
hkai
It's not bad at all. CNN showed its incompetence again with headlines like
"Hong Kong turned into a ghost town".

And then I went out and people are playing in the park, doing sports, going
shopping, eating at restaurants - all the same except the horrifying crowds of
tourists, which are gone.

We do work from home though, something that a Hong Kong employer wouldn't
usually allow.

------
aloer
What is the typical return date for Chinese living in Europe and the US
regarding CNY?

It is my understanding that the CNY was not cancelled and many will have gone
back to visit family in China, at least outside the highly affected areas.

When will they fly back?

~~~
kzrdude
One of my friends came back from China this morning. They'll be working from
home the next 2 weeks to be safe.

------
bane
The Chinese government's response to this situation (after some initial
dithering) has been to move swiftly with big moves. I suspect that the force
that overcame the initial delays in local response were powerful central
government actors who could some in and simply shut cities and entire areas
down and not fool around. There appears to be at least one emergency prefab
hospital with about 1600 beds under construction and foreign disease experts
have been invited in to help with the situation. And now large liquidity
injections into the markets.

Compare this to the previous recent epidemics that came from China, SARS,
H7N9, some variants of Swine Flu and so on. This response feels very
different.

I work near some people who are providing some analysis of the disease and the
evaluation from that community seems to be that the Chinese government has
been doing a really strong job in their response and it seems to reflect a
turning point in how the government deals with these things.

In the past it appears that even having a rampant disease epidemic was
considered so embarrassing that it was everything that could be done to hide
it. Now it appears that hiding it and acting like its not happening is so
embarrassing that a muscular response is warranted. I suppose that's an
improvement.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
This kind of analysis I'm seeing everywhere is so misguided. The reason the
local government didn't report on the situation accurately and even punished
some journalists for speaking about it is a flaw of how their country is run
and how their command structure incentives are poorly set up. This isn't a new
problem and it's why we have converged to a different system in most of the
West.

The government coming in later after the situation is already out of control
and responding aggressively is only a sign of their failure, given that it
wouldn't be necessary for this to happen in a country that wasn't so
authoritarian. This should be a wake up call to people in the West who think
that banning "fake news" and "misinformation" is a good idea, given that the
local government used this exact same excuse to punish journalists speaking
about the outbreak early, when it could have been controlled properly.

~~~
cambalache
It seems to me that China can only make wrong in your eyes.

If it takes time to act it is because the system causes this failure.

If the government acts swiftly, it is because they are in panic.

If it does not solve the situation, of course because they have a terrible
oppressive culture.

If the problem is fixed. Of course, because these are one of the few
advantages of having an authoritarian system.

No matter what China does, you will say something bad.

I know this makes me sound like CCP shill, but I am not. I only want to read
an assessment made with the same level of rigour and sympathy, if, instead of
China was Denmark or Australia.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
This is the first comment I've made on this forum about China, so whoever
you're speaking to is clearly not me but a collective "you" instead.
Responding as myself, I simply added balance to the comment above me. Many
people are making the exact same argument the person I responded to is making,
and while that argument isn't false, it's clearly misleading.

China does get credit for responding to the situation as they did after the
central government got involved. However, we must remember that the situation
would likely not have occurred in the first place if the people speaking out
about it early on weren't punished, which wouldn't happen in most western
countries as local governments have way less power and way less incentives to
make that kind of thing happen. This situation is a good example of the
problems of their authoritarian system, and a good reminder of why we value
(or why we should value) the things we value in the West, like free speech.

~~~
stone-monkey
> However, we must remember that the situation would likely not have occurred
> in the first place if the people speaking out about it early on weren't
> punished, which wouldn't happen in most western countries as local
> governments have way less power and way less incentives to make that kind of
> thing happen.

I'm not saying the Chinese government doesn't have problems, nor am I saying
free speech is bad, but I have no idea how you could come to this conclusion
that free speech would somehow limit the spread of this disease. We have free
speech in the US and that's literally led to the rise of anti inoculation
advocacy.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
Anti-vaccination advocacy exists because some kids do get problems from
vaccines. I'm not an anti-vaxxer but it's an inherent feature of how vaccines
work that a very small percentage of kids will have some serious things happen
as a result of being vaccinated. When you have a big population and the
Internet, this small percentage of parents will logically come together to
cope with their problems. The fact that those people exist and they can talk
about it is evidence that our system is working, not that it isn't.

~~~
giornogiovanna
That is a _very_ charitable portrait of the anti-vaccination movement. No,
they aren't parents of vaccine-allergic children banding together "to cope
with their problems". They are people spreading serious misinformation about
vaccines, advocating that they are risky and best forgone, and causing real
damage by doing so. I think silencing these people is wrong, but that doesn't
change the fact that their speech is clearly making the world a worse place.

------
stazz1
Liquid injection needs to happen but the hard part is knowing where. Micro
injections around the whole economy would be better than huge injections into
one-door banks. Bailouts do more for citizens directly than for corporations,
as is shown time and time again. Liquid injection is basically another name
for bailout, no? And where is this money going? Probably not to the best node
where it will make the most travel

------
aazaa
> U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said last week that the virus could
> force companies to re-evaluate their supply chains, potentially returning
> some jobs to the United States.

The outbreak comes at a time of high vulnerability for the Chinese economy.
This is almost certainly just the start of a very aggressive money pumping
episode.

------
jijji
This whole disease and infection comes down to a fundamental breakdown of
sanitary practices of a society. Things like 1) cutting up and selling wild
animal meat with your bare hands, 2) not washing your hands, 3) eating
uncooked meat from wild animals like frogs, cats, rats, mice, "bat soup", 4)
having open air "squat toilets" like latrines where when someone shoots their
diarrhea, it turns into a mist and everyone in the room gets infected... If
these conditions were improved, these viral outbreaks either wouldn't happen
or wouldn't happen as often as it does in China. All I know is if you try to
get away with that kind of stuff in the U.S., you will have the health
department, dept of agriculture, the cops would all show up and shut you down
and/or get arrested for it.

------
cs702
All I can think is:

Good luck to any short sellers who decide to fight _that_.

It will be interesting to watch -- from a safe distance.

~~~
koheripbal
...which is why you don't short - you just buy low with limit orders. Betting
shorts will eventually burn you.

------
moneywoes
For the economists out there, how much will this help?

~~~
MR4D
Not much. Might even have the opposite effect.

This is like China’s 9-11. They have fear, a travel shutdown, and effectively
shut down their businesses for at least a week.

The economic impact just driven by the fear is huge. The magnitude probably
won’t be truly understood until the second half of the year.

------
thedance
Is that a lot?

------
tempsy
I think they also restricted short selling

------
wwwtyro
Here's a map with the latest coronavirus data:
[https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...](https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

~~~
jmnicolas
According to your link the survivability rate is almost 98% (305 deaths for
14628 cases).

(I'm trying to inject a bit of optimism here, people are so gloomy).

~~~
norrius
Given what appears to be exponential growth, the calculation seems to ignore
potential future deaths in the currently known cases. Pardon the morbidity and
cynicism, but maybe some of these 14628 people haven't had the time to die
yet?

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to compare deaths (305) to the number of
people successfully recovered (348 as per the same page)? This gives the
survivability rate of 53%, which does sound scary (and I'd love to be proven
wrong here).

~~~
jmnicolas
I'm pretty sure you die faster than you can recover from this thing. So we
should see a better deaths / recoveries ratio in the coming weeks.

~~~
koheripbal
You are assuming that the data quality here isn't complete garbage.

------
cltsang
Pardon my lack of economics knowledge. They may be able to keep the stock
afloat for a few days, then what's next? Where will the money eventually go?

How can this help when economic activities halt?

~~~
MR4D
This is a liquidity event, not a stock market problem. They have to be solved
differently.

So you are right that they may help the market for a day or two, but that
won’t solve the underlying issue as you suspected.

More will be needed. Much, much more.

------
edoo
Adding liquidity (aka printing money) just kicks the can down the road.
Supposedly the US GDP last year was up close to 4%, but they failed to account
for the 6% increase in the money supply, which means an actual 2% contraction
instead which is a huge difference. In the US at least this has been ongoing
since 2009. In the long run it causes more losses to the people overall while
creating/propping up the upper echelons of a monetary cast system. An analogy
could be getting hit on the hand with a hammer. It might be scarier to get a
single hard blow but repeated medium energy blows are overall going to cause a
lot more damage.

------
sytelus
If US or China stock market was to go down, govt will immediately infuse such
massive cash that things would be back up in no time. I'm wondering this is
why there had been no recession past the entire decade and very likely none
ahead. Somehow we have arrived at economic prosperity level where enough
wealth is "buffered" to smooth out downturns.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> I'm wondering this is why there had been no recession past the entire decade
> and very likely none ahead.

I'm taking your "we've solved the business cycle!" comment as my sell signal.
Everything is rosy until it isn't. I have a very opposite, pessimistic view,
that this great fear of even the slightest downtown means we're just putting
off the day of reckoning until it really comes crashing down.

The fact is the prosperity of the past 10 years has come with _huge_ and
_growing_ imbalances that can't continue ad infinitum. Deficits are gigantic,
and at some point all this money we've been lending will require higher
interest rates for people to buy our bonds. When that happens, watch out.

~~~
crystaldev
You're absolutely right. You don't have to believe me but I called the last
recession. It's not bad news that's frightening. It's a disproportionate
government and market reaction. Governments making a lot of noise to protect
weak hands. There are _a lot_ of weak hands, many created since we "survived"
the last scare, and it's not going to take much to bust them. Stay safe
everybody and enjoy living history as usual.

------
droithomme
They would be better off redirecting that $174B to other things at the moment.

------
saradhi
Ask HN: Should I be worried about the PANIC around the current situations,
will they act as a rescission trigger? Can I assume a proportional impact on
crypto-currency market as well?

More importantly, I'm considering a move from a Bn$ organization to a safety
concerned mobile-app product startup, How to access whether a start-up can
survive if the situation end-up on the negative side, in the next 6 months.

~~~
cheschire
People have been saying they expect a recession in the next 2 years for the
last 2 years and now is no different. If it was easy to predict when the least
risky time is to make a risky decision, then it wouldn't be risky, gambling
wouldn't be a thing, and life would be forever boring.

~~~
koheripbal
2016 was supposed to be the year the bubble crashes. "They" also said their
would be a double dip in 2012. I've heard so many doom and gloom predictions
in the past - but the one thing they all have in common is a complete lack of
specifics.

WHAT is going to cause the crash? Which industry has a fundamental imbalance?
It's always just some vague notion that "something" isn't right.

~~~
unlinked_dll
>WHAT is going to cause the crash?

A black swan, like coronavirus shutting down China.

>Which industry has a fundamental imbalance?

Consumer debt and financial services.

How has our economic output been growing without much inflation or wage
growth? How did we sell 17 million vehicles domestically last year when the
average American has less than $1k in the bank? How are people buying phones
for $600-700 every two years?

Debt. Lots of it. And what's going to happen when consumer prices get driven
up? Are people going to make their payments?

I don't know, but it doesn't look great.

~~~
pertymcpert
You think a $600 phone every 2 years is a big purchase? People used to buy
desktop computers every few years, now they don’t. The mobile phone generates
such a great improvement in efficiency (no more getting lost, always available
GPS), instant information access (no need to go to a library or spend time
finding it in leaflets/books/traditional sources).

$600 every 2 years is an absolute steal for the most economically beneficial
piece of personal technology ever created.

~~~
unlinked_dll
If you don't make enough money to have any savings, any purchase of $600 at
any time is "big."

Like yea I can afford it because I make 3x what my friends and family do
outside the Bay Area tech bubble, but I don't pretend that I'm not special
because throwing a few hundred around doesn't cause me any stress about next
month's rent, or credit card, or car payment, or health insurance bill.

~~~
pertymcpert
So is paying for food and rent. You have to balance the alternatives of _not_
paying. Not having a capable smartphone in today's world will cost you far
more than the price of the device.

------
jdkee
What are the odds that business as usual resumes tomorrow (Monday 02032020) in
mainland China?

------
jaimex2
China trying to create a perpetual motion machine for its own economy.

------
wyxuan
Wilbur Ross's comments come off as a little callous but whatever.

Anyway, these repo operations are meant to stabilize the markets in the event
of a flash crash where there is a major dislocation on the price of equities,
due to the coronavirus. Still might be a major downside move, but it should
stave any long term move downwards.

~~~
mrscottson
The emergency repo operations were required long before the coronavirus, we
have liquidity issues in the US. Economy will start to collapse shortly... Fed
can't expand the balance sheet without exacerbating the problems.

~~~
totalZero
In the US, cost of money for institutions is already so low that effective
interest rates could absorb a lot of demand without going haywire. It might
actually be healthy for the economy.

I do agree that the Fed has been unwise in buying debt just to bolster
Donald's bull market.

------
notyourwork
> It will do the exact opposite.

Hasn’t the Chinese government been doing this for years in one form or another
to artificially stimulate the market?

~~~
QuesnayJr
I don't understand this obsession with "artificial" stimulus. If the economy
naturally grows at 2% a year, but "artificial" stimulus causes it to grow at
3% a year, why wouldn't you do it? It's like refusing to get vaccines because
they are unnatural.

~~~
staplers
Because natural resources are finite. If you don't understand why runaway
inflation is bad then you'll need to educate yourself.

~~~
glofish
but there is no runaway inflation - as a matter of fact the inflation is lower
than typical

~~~
samsonradu
Globalization kept inflation at bay. Instead of upping prices due to increased
production costs, enterprises in advanced economies moved production to China
& co.

This is not necessarily a bad thing of course, as China catches up and the
‘free’ markets work efficiently. Meanwhile the middle-class in the developped
countries gets hurt, thus their economies see little inflation.

Another argument for this would be that everything not outsource-able saw
rather higher inflation than the CPI numbers. (Housing, education etc.)

Inflation in China though hovers around 5% -
[https://tradingeconomics.com/china/inflation-
cpi](https://tradingeconomics.com/china/inflation-cpi)

------
grecy
> _But I guess each one of us is a victim of a propaganda machine_

I would say the enormous difference is that you are aware of it, while the
vast majority of Americas are utterly clueless. In fact they often take
extreme offence at the very mention their media contains propaganda.

~~~
leftyted
There's a huge difference between "manufacture of consent" type propaganda, in
which the citizenry is complicit in its own indoctrination, and Soviet-style
propaganda where there was no free press and people were killed and jailed for
criticizing the government.

Wondering aloud if the Soviet system might not be better "because at least
people were aware of it" is shocking and cruel.

~~~
rayiner
The “everybody is the same” rhetoric lacks basic credibility. We’ve lived
through three years of the media calling the chief executive a nazi, racist
white supremacist, foreign agent, the harbinger of the downfall of the
country. Can you imagine that happening in Russia or China?

~~~
kamaal
Im not an American but it can be argued the US was not built from the same
social situations Russia, China or any post colonial emerging power was built
from.

US for almost all practical purpose for most of its existence is an extended
Britain. And for the remaining part the best result of European colonialism.
The US is basically Europe. There are now differences of course, but the
bigger story is this.

By and large Russia and China are the result of revolutions, that were
attained in the climate of what was then the dominant political and economic
narrative of the time.

The fact that countries like China and Russia have done whatever they have
done what it took Europe and its colonies centuries to do is in itself a huge
proof of success, if you want to measure it that way.

------
toyg
Gorbachev used to say that Chernobyl was where the USSR really started to
crumble. The disaster made clear how morally bankrupt and technically
incompetent the system really was, wiping out any remaining goodwill or trust.
Similarly, Katrina was where the semi-fascist US consensus under GW Bush went
to pieces.

I suspect China will experience a similar moment at some point. This might
well be it.

~~~
baybal2
This might be similar, but I see zero chance of Xi's power taking a hit. For
as long as party's institutes are intact, he will be there.

Some people began to speculate that Xi wasn't seen for the last 3 days, and
sudden activity of "party elders," but I bet this is just an enormous amounts
of wishful thinking showing up.

Xi's "system" has an expiration date attached, but it's not tomorrow.

Following on that Gorbachev analogy, the Unior really started to crumble
during late Breznev for reasons well documented by historians.

Basically, after Brenzhen loyalists, who mostly were his contemporaries (frail
70-80 and even 90 year olds,) started to drop like flies, a whole truckload of
political adventurists, with rogue 3 letter services in particular, took
advantage of that to grab power. This in a few years term led to the Union
turning ungovernable, and ultimately falling apart.

The ultimate proof to that is that pretty much all across the former union,
the power went to ex-KGB or men from other 3 letter services.

Even as early as Gorbachev's first year, there were officials who were
publicly disobeying his direct orders. The last generation of Union's
leadership was hamstrung even before the power was formally passed to it.

~~~
echelon
How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated? How would the party and the
public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I
wonder what his skeletons in the closet are...

I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of
documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their
system. A film that highlights how the government treats humans and families
as cattle during national emergencies and disasters. Even the great firewall
can't keep that out.

~~~
baybal2
> How stable is the power that Xi has consolidated?

Very stable. Basically nothing besides something coming from withing the party
itself can shake him, and he took down all of those threats to him from within
the party. Not even Mao ever managed to cleanse all of his detractors from the
party up until his death.

Saying this, you should not be confusing that "people are throwing looks into
his back," and quiet whispers of dissatisfaction with genuine resistance.

> How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his
> private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are...

If you can write Chinese, google those skeletons, they are up to everybody to
see. Even taxi drivers here know of Xi's billionaire sister, but... taxi
drivers and other general public can't do anything about that.

> I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of
> documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in
> their system.

People can see that every day out of their windows, not TVs. They don't need
to watch any documentaries to know that.

There is the reason people use name of Dong Zhuo as an euphemism for Xi. Take
a look at this video, the scene from Chang An says it all about the current
political atmosphere in CPC
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj_VMvsG7G0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj_VMvsG7G0)

Commoners resent him for disturbing a relative peace of Hu's years that they
were just getting taste of, by starting a new political upheaval. CPC elders
do not only see him as a threat to Jiang, but they clearly think that they
themselves are his next target. His unilateral ambitions on the international
stage are no match for the discontent world. And yes, the rank and file
ordinary officials can't be more freaked out now.

However... you also don't forget when Xi was thought to stand for reforms, it
were the masses themselves who invited his ambitions to move on the supreme
power. And that those who were benefiting from status quo were hit by that the
most.

~~~
dmurray
> If you can write Chinese, google those skeletons, they are up to everybody
> to see. Even taxi drivers here know of Xi's billionaire sister, but... taxi
> drivers and other general public can't do anything about that.

Why would I need to read Chinese to find out about this? The Chinese state
isn't able to censor content in Chinese, but has got the Western internet
under its thumb?

~~~
spats1990
Hypothetically speaking, would you rather read about the recent US impeachment
proceedings in Korean or in English? You know, the language most widely spoken
in the US?

~~~
lsc
>Hypothetically speaking, would you rather read about the recent US
impeachment proceedings in Korean or in English? You know, the language most
widely spoken in the US?

So, I mean, I agree with your point. but as an aside, I think it would be
really interesting to see the perspective of a Spanish historian on the recent
events in my country

------
ShorsHammer
Meta: 185 top comment replies, 278 comments total. The redditfication of this
place continues. China articles are essentially broken and there's no point
trying to advance the discussion or have healthy debate.

Someone should make an extension that collapses all replies and only shows top
level comments, think it might be a lot healthier for online discourse.

~~~
yongjik
Also, about half of the comments are "(China/America/government in general) is
evil, because (some superficial observation already known by 99% of visitors
here and not directly relevant to the current situation)", or some form of
generic refutation.

I'm also frequently guilty of the same thing, but this is getting out of
hand...

~~~
koheripbal
Social media websites all suffer from a phenomenon of being flooded low
quality content the moment they become popular.

Reddit's content quality dropped significantly the moment they deployed their
mobile app, though it had been on a downward decline for a while.

I've seen HN being discussed at length on Reddit as a better alternative for
"adylts", but now we see the same slow decline here.

The important questions are...

1\. How can social media sites control quality of submitters.

2\. What is the next site everyone over 30 is moving to and how do we stop all
these teenagers from following us? /s

~~~
BostonEnginerd
Metafilter has maintained reasonably high levels of discussion and civility.
Part of this is active mods, the other part is that an account costs some
money to open.

~~~
beamatronic
I’d pay for HN

~~~
koolba
How much?

~~~
beamatronic
It’s worth at least as much as the New York Times, which is $8 a month

------
c789a123
I have warned many times that CCP is an evil regime and will cause big
disaster for whole human society. Whoever in the free world still trying to
make some profits collaborating with CCP, just remember: dance with the devil,
just wait for the music to stop.

~~~
yibg
While this might be true I’m not sure if we chalk this one up to the CCP. I
mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other countries.

~~~
throw0101a
> _I mean it’s not like a viral epidemic can’t originate from other
> countries._

In authoritative countries the messenger of bad news tends to be
'disciplined', and so bad news is not delivered. It still exists, but no one
wants to be the individual that creates the (negative) feedback loop that may
be contrary to the _diktat_ that came down from on high.

Of course hiding bad news happens in less authoritative countries as well
(being the "tall poppy", Law of Jante, 「出る杭は打たれる」), but the consequences may
be less severe.

There was all sorts of secrecy with SARS many years ago, and it seems that
China has still not completely broken that 'habit':

* [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-stat...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/early-missteps-and-state-secrecy-in-china-probably-allowed-the-coronavirus-to-spread-farther-and-faster/ar-BBZya9o)

~~~
yibg
I wonder if there isn’t a certain element of hindsight bias here. Now it’s
clear that more action should’ve been taken earlier. But knowing the panic
this has caused, not to mention the economic, global logistics and travel
impacts I don’t know if it was such an obvious situation at the time.
Especially when the vitality, severity and mechanism of transmission etc
weren’t clear. CCP policy and behavioral patterns aside, I can see the local
official in charge wanting to avoid being the guy that caused a bunch of
public panic over nothing.

Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people
panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets
quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover.
I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.

~~~
c789a123
I can understand also the need to prevent public panic. But I can not
understand the motivation of organizing big public activities when knowing a
dangerous virus is in the ran. I am referring to the so called "40k family
banquet"
（[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI）](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kft21UdBFI）).
Permit me copy my other comment here to explain what it is:

I read on twitter around Dec 31 that there was such a virus spreading in
Wuhan. Around Jan 1, the Wuhan police dep publicly condemned 8 person (the
origin of the twitter news) for spreading this information and called it a
rumour. Then the gov did everything to hide info and did nothing to prevent
its spreading before around Jan 2x. They behaved even like they want to spread
it as much as possible because just about two to five days before they made
the announcement of the virus outbreak, the Wuhan gov organized a so called
40k family new year banquet -- around 40k Wuhan local families were
concentrated together to have a banquet to celebrate the coming Chinese new
year. All the events I cited here can be found on China's own newspaper and tv
recordings.

------
qeternity
...most of which is just repos being rolled over yielding a surprisingly small
net 150b CNY injection.

But I guess there's no reason the PBOC can't legitimately go PPT a la BOJ and
just buy equities. They have the reserves.

------
redis_mlc
Most (perhaps all) of the comments for this post are nonsense.

As reported for decades, rural China has a problem with small-time farmers
living in proximity with livestock, especially pigs. Thus you get the annual
"swine flu" as genetically we're very similar, so can pass viruses back and
forth and amplify them.

So if you want to understand this flu season, just google for past years,
especially SARS. This corona virus appears to be an even more communicable
analog to SARS, which nations struggled to contain last time.

------
BenoitEssiambre
I wish western world central banks were as competent. In a situation of sudden
supply constraints, prices are supposed to adjust up. This is basic supply and
demand.

Western world central banks tend to pressure prices down during economic
shocks by withholding liquidity. This puts private markets in a gridlock and
causes untold amount of damage to people's careers.

~~~
samsonradu
Liquidity has been anything but withheld in the western world. Look at the G4
balance sheets and interest rates in the past decade.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
What do you mean? Bernanke himself has estimated that interest rates should
have been as low as -4% during the period from 2009 to 2015
([https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-
bernanke/2015/04/28/the-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-
bernanke/2015/04/28/the-taylor-rule-a-benchmark-for-monetary-policy/) ).

They kept them super high at 0%, up to 4% higher than the equilibrium
estimate, which caused inflation to perpetually undershoot and people's
careers to be stunted. On top of that, they started giving out interest on
reserves which further contracted liquidity.

The growth in excess reserves happened because money being made artificially
too good at retaining value compared to private assets, caused people,
businesses and banks to hoard it. If central banks would have been
sufficiently aggressive at giving it out, they would ironically have given out
a lot less because people would not have event wanted that much and instead
would have continued keeping their savings in better functioning private
markets.

~~~
koheripbal
Negative interest rates have other major problems - that are worse than a
liquidity shortage.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
For a large part of history, negative real returns on stores of value were the
norm. Before financial systems existed, almost all investments had negative
returns if you didn’t put work and energy into them. To store value, you had
to accumulate stuff, buildings or land. Most options either had high
maintenance costs, were subject to risk of damage from natural causes and
theft, were very volatile or required hard labor to get production out of.

The government creating paper assets that have an above market return, puts a
gridlock in the private markets and destroys people's lives.

~~~
samsonradu
Can you elaborate a little on this? Investments having a negative return does
not mean the market (reference) interest rate is negative.

Take the gold standard, do you think anyone was able to borrow gold and pay
less back? Isn’t that the actual interest rate we are discussing here?

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
The gold standard was a disaster that lead to the great depression, but that
was government manipulated gold.

Gold in a free market would tend to self adjust.

Buying gold as an asset when there is a "flight to safety" and then selling it
in better times when there are enough other good assets available such as
stocks with good dividends would mean buying gold when gold prices are high
and selling it when prices are low thus resulting in negative returns.

Negative real returns happen in free markets. Blocking them causes huge
problems.

~~~
samsonradu
You’re right, negative real returns definitely happen - but that’s not the
interest rate. Interest rates apply to loans, not assets.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
The real natural rate should be in line with the private markets with regards
to safe, liquid short term assets. There is an issue when you hit 0% nominal,
called the zero lower bound problem
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_lower_bound](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_lower_bound)).
Mechanically you can solve that by keeping inflation high enough that you
don't reach negative nominal rates even when you have negative real rates.

------
howmayiannoyyou
China = 20% of global GDP -> shutdown until Feb 17th.

China = ??% of global supply chain -> shutdown until Feb 17th.

This is the current status quo. If the situation isn't controlled by Feb 13th
you can kiss at least 1/3 of global GDP goodbye.

And, don't get me started on possible outbreaks elsewhere.

~~~
jmnicolas
Stop spreading FUD. There have been a couple hundred deaths.

Even if the numbers have been minimized, compare this to the 40'000 deaths due
to the flu in the US every year ...

~~~
appleiigs
Ok, then do you think everyone should just open up and start travelling again?

~~~
jmnicolas
I wouldn't travel to China now, but I wouldn't hesitate to travel anywhere
else in the world (I'll gladly accept any donations to prove my point ;-)

~~~
londons_explore
I'd even happily travel to china.

My worry would be the risk of being stuck somewhere when my planned transport
is cancelled rather than being infected and dying.

300 deaths out of over a billion people is nothing.

~~~
xorfish
A virus with R0 of 2 and a mortality rate of 2% would kill 1% of the world
population if no containment measures are taken. That would be 75 million
people.

~~~
K0SM0S
Thanks, TIL. For those like me who paused at _R₀_ (r-naught), quote from
wiki[1]:

> R-naught is the average number of people infected from one other person, for
> example, Ebola has an r-naught of two, so on average, a person who has Ebola
> will pass it on to two other people.

See _“Limitations of R₀”_ too: when solely derived from math models, _“values
[of R₀] should be used with caution”_ and _“this severely limits its
usefulness.”_.

As I understand, _take it for what it is: model not gospel._

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number)

~~~
xorfish
Yes, quarantines and public awareness will reduce the spread quite
significantly. Hopefully to the point that less than one person gets infected
per sick individual.

------
daenz
Maybe this is demonstrates an immediate consequence of having a people
(mainland China, not necessarily HK) that is governed primarily by fear:
reactions of extreme subordination, which keep things running "smoothly" under
normal conditions, can threaten the whole system to collapse under abnormal
conditions.

~~~
ineedasername
Maybe outside of China we see it as "ruled by fear", but that's really not the
case in China, at least for the majority: China doesn't try to make it's
citizens afraid. Quite the opposite. Their modus operandi is "move along,
nothing to see here, everything is fine." Indeed, that was their initial
message to the public for this virus. So, the problem and partial cause of
panic is when there is a problem that is very definitely _not_ "nothing to see
here", and the government is demonstrably, extremely _wrong_ and perhaps
_incompetent_. When so much is seen to be controlled by the government, a flaw
in that armor is all the more worrying.

~~~
daenz
China is a place where you can be locked to a chair and interrogated by police
for social media comments critical of the state. Don't try to tell me it isn't
a government ruled through fear.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6uy12RpqQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6uy12RpqQc)

~~~
throw4r563s
That’s like saying Americans are in fear of being water boarded by the
authorities.

Chinese people in China are not afraid of the cops. If you see how Chinese
people interact with cops, I bet you would be surprised.

I regularly see people yelling and screaming at them, and the Chinese cops
will still try to diffuse the situation.

~~~
gruez
>Chinese people in China are not afraid of the cops. If you see how Chinese
people interact with cops, I bet you would be surprised.

Perhaps they're not afraid of the cops on a daily basis, but they are afraid
of the CCP.

>That’s like saying Americans are in fear of being water boarded by the
authorities.

Guess where you can shit talk about the head of state and not end up in a re-
education camp?

