There hardly been a single regime in history so eager to slaughter hens laying golden eggs.
China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development (unless it's real estate development.) I first understood it when I seen block, and blocks of factories being bulldozed to make space for luxury hotels, and hooker parlours. Tells of priorities of people in power.
> China's GDP has increased 8x since the year 2000.
China was a 3rd world nation which experienced an industrial revolution, which like all industrial revolutions beforehand was faster and more prosperous because they could just buy the relevant technology and expertise, which was now even cheaper then it was for the previous industrial revolution.
Their GDP growth tells us nothing about whether their government is good at running a modern economy (evidence says no): because you have to pretty much be actively trying to fail to not have "miraculous" GDP growth when industrializing up from subsistence level farming.
> China was a 3rd world nation which experienced an industrial revolution
Why did that happen? Why isn't it happening so rapidly for other "3rd world" nations? I mean it wasn't luck. Economists will point to specific policies of the Chinese government that made it happen so quickly.
> Economists will point to specific policies of the Chinese government that made it happen so quickly.
and those policies are not some special secret; they are the same "industrial policies" that japan, south korea, and the u.s (and many other advanced countries) used to develop rapidly and fully...
> they are the same "industrial policies" that japan, south korea, and the u.s (and many other advanced countries) used to develop rapidly and fully
At a very high level yes. But when you look closer, not at all. Abenomics for example, can be contrasted with Reagonimics [1]. Because while there are some similarities, there are also important differences.
But more importantly, why does this matter? No one said the Chinese government used "special secrets" for the wildly successful past two decades. The original question was "when will China start".
You seem to be of the same view as everyone else here: they already did start.
You also avoided the question I asked. Can you answer it?
Why didn't China's rapid rise out of poverty happen to other "3rd world" nations? Some poor countries have the same industrial policies as the US but aren't quickly rising out of poverty. You need to explain why China is different.
> Abenomics for example, can be contrasted with Reagonimics [1]
oh definitely
what i was referring specifically to was the period of dramatic growth and improvement in quality of life, so japan up until the 90s, the us until around the end of the 60s etc
in those periods, they had real honest-to-god industrial policies how they wanted to direct research and development, improve technology and investment etc
abenomics and regonomics are basically the opposite and signal the neoliberal turn in thinking
> The original question was "when will China start".
You seem to be of the same view as everyone else here: they already did start.
sorry, maybe i missed that, but anyways i agree with you 100%
> You also avoided the question I asked. Can you answer it?
Why didn't China's rapid rise out of poverty happen to other "3rd world" nations?
i didn't know i avoided it, but im happy to try and answer ^^
> Some poor countries have the same industrial policies as the US but aren't quickly rising out of poverty.
You need to explain why China is different.
as i alluded to earlier, the us and many other "1st world" countries had mostly given up on what is called "industrial policy" and directed investments that gave them so much growth and prosperity in the early days.
following neoliberal economic thinking (mainstreamed in the 70s) that austerity and free-market economics (including allowing vast monopolies) and privatization of public services would somehow bring everlasting high growth (supply-side economics) but instead results in lower growth, higher costs (just look at cost of healthcare in the us) and bigger wealth-gap causing all kinds of issues
many "3rd world" countries followed those neoliberal economic policies and quickly found out that austerity and privatization of too many public services (to name just a few things) just caused collapse and chaos, and then they cant pay off their imf loans meaning... more privatization and austerity as part of the condition to extend payments (this just causes a downward spiral and locks many countries in and almost "debt peonage" type of situation)
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actually this is really a long discussion hard to do in hn, but probably we are more in agreement than disagreement i am guessing
but if you have a different perspective im very curious to see your explanation as well, so please by
all means ^^
They did. The Chinese economy has pulled more people out of poverty in the past few decades than any economy in human history. By far.
"In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population.
By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people"
Mistaking the China of today for the China of 50 years ago would be naive and dangerous. Fortunately most world leaders are savvy enough to be taking action to compete.
This is not an endorsement of the Chinese government. It's just a factual observation of recent history.
I never quite understood that line since they pretty much purged themselves in the first place and were "lifting themselves" after sinking themselves in the cultural revolution. They opened up after visiting Asian Tiger economies and realizing they were far behind Singapore, South Korea, et al.
If you want to blame them for the bad you need to give them credit for recent accomplishments.
Unless you think it's a line that Americans sunk themselves in The Great Depression and therefore American leaders should get no credit for the following recovery.
Leaders change. Economic policy changes. China changed direction and lifted a huge number of people out of poverty. It's as simple as that.
> They opened up after visiting Asian Tiger economies and realizing they were far behind Singapore, South Korea, et al.
And? What's the point? That they learned by observing? Is that bad?
The Great Depression was not a deliberate purge, markets follow boom and bust cycles.
>And? What's the point? That they learned by observing? Is that bad?
It's a self-serving bias to attribute their economic development to their leadership. They would've developed sooner and are simply taking credit for getting out of their own way. Sure, you can point to specific projects and say "the government bankrolled this therefore it exists" but it's not like in their absence nothing would have developed. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Seoul, Tokyo et al have pretty skylines and good public transportation too.
> The Great Depression was not a deliberate purge, markets follow boom and bust cycles.
Right. You're doing exactly what I pointed out before: making excuses for US economic policy when it fails but giving it the credit when it succeeds.
> They would've developed sooner and are simply taking credit for getting out of their own way.
Who is "they"? You do realize China has had more than one leader in the past 50 years?
> They would've developed sooner
Uh sure. So what? The point is that they are wildly succeeded the past couple of decades. The original claim that started this was they haven't done anything remarkable yet. Which as a matter of historical record, is wrong. The past 20 years have been remarkable for wiping out poverty in China. Regardless of whether or not that poverty could have been wiped out earlier, it was wiped out. And this happened under the current Chinese government. So the claim that the current Chinese government can "achieve miracles" in 20 years -- while exaggerated -- is far closer to the counter claim that they have achieved nothing yet.
> taking credit for getting out of their own way.
That would not be how most economists would describe Chinese economic policy. It doesn't even describe the relatively less controlled US economic policy.
Certainly Xi doesn't think that he's anti-business, and much that he's done mirrors the EU's actions vs monopolies. But Xi also has no understanding of business, and wants to micromanage everywhere. I think he's already had a large chilling effect without wanting to do that. He could easily, clumsily, kill off most of the geese laying golden eggs for him by instilling more terror of the government than hope of profit. I'm not sure that'll happen, but reading his speeches to this new PRC congress I suspect so.
Why they didn't do so already?
There hardly been a single regime in history so eager to slaughter hens laying golden eggs.
China is extremely anti-business, and anti-development (unless it's real estate development.) I first understood it when I seen block, and blocks of factories being bulldozed to make space for luxury hotels, and hooker parlours. Tells of priorities of people in power.