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China has done a really great job marketing their economy to the average American though. From the quick numbers to the glistening photos of Shanghai. Ask most
by vtange 10y ago
China has done a really great job marketing their economy to the average American though. From the quick numbers to the glistening photos of Shanghai.
Ask most non-China watching Americans, and they'll tell you that they're more innovative than the U.S. and we should be more like them than they to us and focus on the economy instead of human rights, which by the way is exactly what the Chinese party line wants.
Which I always found funny since we're actually pretty eager to doubt our own government (some even believe Washington is more corrupt than any other foreign country) and downplay our own achievements/ point out our own flaws.
- Zigurd 10y agoSome of the obvious achievements in China can't be faked. Shanghai, Beijing, ShenZhen and other first-tier cities are very impressive, not just in pictures. These are not Potemkin villages. The impressiveness is evident edge to edge, all over town. Westerners often don't know where to look for problems. For example, the walled-off hutongs in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics were cordoned off because they are prime luxury real estate being renovated, not because they were slums. The irony is that the Chinese did a bad job preserving enough of those old courtyard homes. There is both casual and acute corruption in China, and that is hard to cover in the news. Concealing corruption is in nearly everyone's interest. Nobody will like you for uncovering it.
- baybal2 10y agoYes, that's true. Shenzhen real estate prices are closing on that of Manhattan's when you talk about urban centres. It is also the most expensive city to live in in China (again, true only for urban centres. Suburbs are still livable). These two things together made the cost of doing business here prohibitive, unless your business is not real estate speculation. Local electronics businesses closing one after another. The famed Shanzhai garage companies fared even worse than established businesses. There not a single one left now. They died to phenomenal brain drain levels, costs, market saturation, US an EU domestic consumption going down, and people leaving for "cheaper and easier live abroad"
- seanmcdirmid 10y agoShenzhen real estate value is approaching Tokyo's of the late 80s...I won't spoil how that ended. Living abroad can actually be cheaper than china, especially for middle class Chinese who want public education for their kids, a nice car, a house at a more decent price, oh and clean air (SZ is better than most, but still not good by developed world standards). It really is no wonder there are still so many Chinese immigrants coming into the states even with China's "success".
- baybal2 10y agoI totally agree, I'm a weird case of a greedy guy who moved to Vancouver for its moneys (and most of its moneys are Chinese, and to lesser extent Indian). When Chinese moneys in Vancouver were not enough for me anymore, I went to China for even more of Chinese moneys. Life is weird.
- kurthr 10y agoYes, even SanFran/SiliValley prices do not surprise Chinese visitors to the US. They're only shocked you get an entire house for that price, and that the houses are so old!
- simonh 10y agoIt's not as if any bursting of the bubble in China would regress them back to the 1980s, any more than the financial crisis here undid all the previous decades of growth. It would be painful and destabilising and many people would suffer, but China would remain a much more powerful and successful country than its ever been. Take Japan, its suffered from decades of low stagnation but is still a major economy.