5 ms·

China’s policies are confusing, first they wanted to move everyone to the major cities, now the cities are saying they will cap the populations. Anyone know wh

China’s policies are confusing, first they wanted to move everyone to the major cities, now the cities are saying they will cap the populations. Anyone know what is going on?

hktrl 9y ago
If you use a bit of your brain you'll understand. The top tier Chinese cities are completely packed my people and is not easy to live in, yet, anything is much more expensive and the infrastructure are not suitable enough for future expansion. China still have hundred millions people who will move from the farms to the cities in the following years. Those people can't move all in the top tier cities building a nation with 5/6 megacities with 50+ million people. They're trying to make the second tier and third tier cities (10+ million - 5+ million) the place where these people will move and the only way is to block the expansion of the top tier cities
- cycrutchfield 9y ago
  Is the snark necessary? Does it add anything to this discussion?
  - hktrl 9y ago
    It's obvious to understand that 1.5 billion people can't be fit in 5 cities. Or you want me to draw it down? The fact is that in this article, there is no news. We all should take it as example to build multiple cities and not concentrate all the services, industries, workers in one or two cities. US and Europe suffer this issue and it's quite obvious. San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, are examples of places where the cost of living is so high that even people who have a proper job can't afford to live. Yet, we still put all the companies and the services in the top cities and we create a new class or poor workers that couldn't even pay a rent to live decently. We like to talk smart, but we act like idiots. I can only see that, at least, in China the trend is different.
adventured 9y ago
They're in a situation where they need to dramatically slow down debt accumulation, which will slow down economic growth a bit faster than otherwise anticipated. It's a whiplash action, going from the growth the last 20 years (in which people were aggressively encouraged to move into the cities) to needing to strictly control that growth and the correlated debt expansion. Manufacturing stopped net expanding years ago, many of their largest state-corporate manufacturing enterprises are simultaneously loaded to the ceiling with debt and being heavily subsidized to maintain current levels of employment and output. There is wide discussion about local governments being allowed to go bankrupt, because the debt burdens have gotten so extreme: "China Central Bank Official Says Bankruptcy May Benefit the Country" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-25/pboc-official-says-local-government-bankruptcies-are-needed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-25/pboc-offi... China's goal, in theory, is to transition increasingly to a services economy, to provide the next leg of its growth, as manufacturing can't provide that. Service economies grow far slower than the type of manufacturing fill-in-the-slack / join the WTO boom they saw from ~1992-2015. They can no longer afford to keep accumulating debt as they have been since 2007. S&P is forecasting another ~75% increase in their total debt position in just the next five or so years, which would push them to... ~550%-600% debt to GDP ratio (possibly worse when counting all the shadow debt), or nearly twice that of the US. It's untenable to say the least. Bottom line: China has to start applying the brakes, and that likely means dramatically slowing the migration into the cities. That migration is unsustainable if China has to slow its debt expansion (which it does). It takes extraordinary perpetual economic expansion to provide enough jobs for all of those people and pay for the infrastructure demands. China's financial reserves haven't kept pace with either their debt or GDP growth, with about 3/4 of those reserves untouchable. Their ability to continue to finance the wild debts that have gone with the local government & infrastructure splurges, is heavily restricted now (if cities like Shanghai or Beijing want to add millions of more people, it'd require continuing to fund all of that while the overall context gets more shaky).
- shostack 9y ago
  What are successful paths to transition to a services economy? Where does the money typically come from?
est 9y ago
It's simple. The rest 40M+ ppl in the city are "illegal immigrants". Which means no permanent residency, no health care, no education but only cheap labor.
- hktrl 9y ago
  true as you can fit 2 liters of wine in a 1 liter jar.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    Oh you can. You just distill the rum out and feed the unneeded portion to the pigs. Which is presumably something like what is going on.
  - yazaddaruvala 9y ago
    That is a very solvable problem! Just apply the right amount of pressure :)
- 4684499 9y ago
  Excuse me, but where does the number 40M+ come from?
  - baybal2 9y ago
    Greater Beijing region may be?
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Greater BJ is just about 20 million.
      - baybal2 9y ago
        Greater BJ + nearby parts of Hubei?
4684499 9y ago
> they wanted to move everyone to the major cities Source please? What I know is they wanted to move everyone to cities, "major" is not necessary.
Cookingboy 9y ago
That's not true, China does not want to move people into major cities, that's why they have the "Hukou" system, which is a residency registration. What they want is urbanization of the less developed areas, many of which were farmlands from before.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  > What they want is urbanization of the less developed areas Everybody wants that. Can't remember that any country ever got it, in the last century, anyway. That's akin to wanting water to roll uphill. Argentine will prefer its population to not clutter around Buenos Aires. France will prefer everybody not move to Paris, same for Russia with Moscow. But that's just not what is happening anywhere. If you're moving to a city, makes total sense to pick a powerful one.
  - mantas 9y ago
    USSR did it to some extent. By forced work assignments after university in bum-fuck nowhere. As well as scarce goods more available in those cities as a bonus. On top of that, people were not allowed to freely move. You couldn't just move to a city, rent apartment and look for a job. For people in countryside, university and assignment after it was pretty much the only way to move to a city. University courses were highly limited though and far from everybody could get in.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      USSR tried to do it to some extent, still Moscow grew from ~1.5mln to 8mln on their watch. The key was that while theoretically the state wanted it to stop bulging, a huge number of influental state enterprises wanted more workers and wanted them now, and got their way more often than not. And Russia still deals with millions of people who are spread around evenly across landscape in single-employer towns where there's no longer any jobs. And no economic reason for these towns to have any jobs in the future. Some of these in the far north or Siberia for no apparent reason.
volgo 9y ago
The problem they're trying to solve is city slums, which is common in Asia. I've worked in India before, and every major city (Delhi, Chennai) is filled with massive slums of migrant workers who obviously haven't kept up with the modern development. Without turning this into a pity post and sounding like an uncultured asshole, it was horrifying to see and really broke my heart that people are living in conditions like this. This is very common in SE Asia as well if you look at cities like Manila, Jakarta, etc. It's a tried and failed approach to have "open migration" policies in developing countries and have labor conditions race to the bottom. To a lesser extend, Beijing + Shanghai has this problem as well. I was in BJ 7 years ago (so my experience may be outdated), but there are parts of the old city that still has Hutongs, which are slum like buildings that have largely been vacated but migrant workers have "illegally" occupied. (I put "illegal" in quotes because human beings aspiring for shelter shouldn't be illegal, anyways, off point) The root of the problem is migrant workers moving into cities for slave-like labor and are commonly exploited by local residents and employers. They're offered "jobs" that are way below the legal minimum wage and are often paid under the table. They can't say no because their employers have power over them (threat to report to police, etc). In many sense, "illegal" migrant workers are not that different from "illegal" immigrants. In order to raise the living standards of an entire area, you have to enforce issues like safe labor practice, minimum wage, vacation days, etc. Without heavy hand regulation in a developing countries, these things don't magically come at the kindness of employers. They must be forced. The developed countries all went through this stage much earlier this century (think back on all the activists who died pushing for labor rights in U.S. in early 1900s). When you have a massive population of people who are in dire situations and who don't have anywhere to turn, it's difficult to force employers to raise working standards. It's a difficult issue. On one hand, it's pretty heavy handed and inhuman to tell a migrant worker they're not allowed to live in a city that's part of their own damn country. On the other hand, we don't want cities to race to the bottom with unsanitary and slum like conditions. What's the balance? I've no idea, but I'm glad Shanghai at least understands this is a problem instead of copying other Asian cities that have failed at this
velodrome 9y ago
Maybe, this is their way of directing people into the vacant "ghost" cities.

China’s policies are confusing, first they wanted to move everyone to the major cities, now the cities are saying they will cap the populations. Anyone know what is going on?

hktrl 9y ago

If you use a bit of your brain you'll understand. The top tier Chinese cities are completely packed my people and is not easy to live in, yet, anything is much more expensive and the infrastructure are not suitable enough for future expansion. China still have hundred millions people who will move from the farms to the cities in the following years. Those people can't move all in the top tier cities building a nation with 5/6 megacities with 50+ million people. They're trying to make the second tier and third tier cities (10+ million - 5+ million) the place where these people will move and the only way is to block the expansion of the top tier cities

cycrutchfield 9y ago
Is the snark necessary? Does it add anything to this discussion?
- hktrl 9y ago
  It's obvious to understand that 1.5 billion people can't be fit in 5 cities. Or you want me to draw it down? The fact is that in this article, there is no news. We all should take it as example to build multiple cities and not concentrate all the services, industries, workers in one or two cities. US and Europe suffer this issue and it's quite obvious. San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, are examples of places where the cost of living is so high that even people who have a proper job can't afford to live. Yet, we still put all the companies and the services in the top cities and we create a new class or poor workers that couldn't even pay a rent to live decently. We like to talk smart, but we act like idiots. I can only see that, at least, in China the trend is different.

adventured 9y ago

They're in a situation where they need to dramatically slow down debt accumulation, which will slow down economic growth a bit faster than otherwise anticipated. It's a whiplash action, going from the growth the last 20 years (in which people were aggressively encouraged to move into the cities) to needing to strictly control that growth and the correlated debt expansion. Manufacturing stopped net expanding years ago, many of their largest state-corporate manufacturing enterprises are simultaneously loaded to the ceiling with debt and being heavily subsidized to maintain current levels of employment and output. There is wide discussion about local governments being allowed to go bankrupt, because the debt burdens have gotten so extreme: "China Central Bank Official Says Bankruptcy May Benefit the Country" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-25/pboc-official-says-local-government-bankruptcies-are-needed https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-25/pboc-offi... China's goal, in theory, is to transition increasingly to a services economy, to provide the next leg of its growth, as manufacturing can't provide that. Service economies grow far slower than the type of manufacturing fill-in-the-slack / join the WTO boom they saw from ~1992-2015. They can no longer afford to keep accumulating debt as they have been since 2007. S&P is forecasting another ~75% increase in their total debt position in just the next five or so years, which would push them to... ~550%-600% debt to GDP ratio (possibly worse when counting all the shadow debt), or nearly twice that of the US. It's untenable to say the least. Bottom line: China has to start applying the brakes, and that likely means dramatically slowing the migration into the cities. That migration is unsustainable if China has to slow its debt expansion (which it does). It takes extraordinary perpetual economic expansion to provide enough jobs for all of those people and pay for the infrastructure demands. China's financial reserves haven't kept pace with either their debt or GDP growth, with about 3/4 of those reserves untouchable. Their ability to continue to finance the wild debts that have gone with the local government & infrastructure splurges, is heavily restricted now (if cities like Shanghai or Beijing want to add millions of more people, it'd require continuing to fund all of that while the overall context gets more shaky).

shostack 9y ago
What are successful paths to transition to a services economy? Where does the money typically come from?

est 9y ago

It's simple. The rest 40M+ ppl in the city are "illegal immigrants". Which means no permanent residency, no health care, no education but only cheap labor.

hktrl 9y ago
true as you can fit 2 liters of wine in a 1 liter jar.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Oh you can. You just distill the rum out and feed the unneeded portion to the pigs. Which is presumably something like what is going on.
- yazaddaruvala 9y ago
  That is a very solvable problem! Just apply the right amount of pressure :)
4684499 9y ago
Excuse me, but where does the number 40M+ come from?
- baybal2 9y ago
  Greater Beijing region may be?
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Greater BJ is just about 20 million.
    - baybal2 9y ago
      Greater BJ + nearby parts of Hubei?

4684499 9y ago

> they wanted to move everyone to the major cities Source please? What I know is they wanted to move everyone to cities, "major" is not necessary.

Cookingboy 9y ago

That's not true, China does not want to move people into major cities, that's why they have the "Hukou" system, which is a residency registration. What they want is urbanization of the less developed areas, many of which were farmlands from before.

thriftwy 9y ago
> What they want is urbanization of the less developed areas Everybody wants that. Can't remember that any country ever got it, in the last century, anyway. That's akin to wanting water to roll uphill. Argentine will prefer its population to not clutter around Buenos Aires. France will prefer everybody not move to Paris, same for Russia with Moscow. But that's just not what is happening anywhere. If you're moving to a city, makes total sense to pick a powerful one.
- mantas 9y ago
  USSR did it to some extent. By forced work assignments after university in bum-fuck nowhere. As well as scarce goods more available in those cities as a bonus. On top of that, people were not allowed to freely move. You couldn't just move to a city, rent apartment and look for a job. For people in countryside, university and assignment after it was pretty much the only way to move to a city. University courses were highly limited though and far from everybody could get in.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    USSR tried to do it to some extent, still Moscow grew from ~1.5mln to 8mln on their watch. The key was that while theoretically the state wanted it to stop bulging, a huge number of influental state enterprises wanted more workers and wanted them now, and got their way more often than not. And Russia still deals with millions of people who are spread around evenly across landscape in single-employer towns where there's no longer any jobs. And no economic reason for these towns to have any jobs in the future. Some of these in the far north or Siberia for no apparent reason.

volgo 9y ago

The problem they're trying to solve is city slums, which is common in Asia. I've worked in India before, and every major city (Delhi, Chennai) is filled with massive slums of migrant workers who obviously haven't kept up with the modern development. Without turning this into a pity post and sounding like an uncultured asshole, it was horrifying to see and really broke my heart that people are living in conditions like this. This is very common in SE Asia as well if you look at cities like Manila, Jakarta, etc. It's a tried and failed approach to have "open migration" policies in developing countries and have labor conditions race to the bottom. To a lesser extend, Beijing + Shanghai has this problem as well. I was in BJ 7 years ago (so my experience may be outdated), but there are parts of the old city that still has Hutongs, which are slum like buildings that have largely been vacated but migrant workers have "illegally" occupied. (I put "illegal" in quotes because human beings aspiring for shelter shouldn't be illegal, anyways, off point) The root of the problem is migrant workers moving into cities for slave-like labor and are commonly exploited by local residents and employers. They're offered "jobs" that are way below the legal minimum wage and are often paid under the table. They can't say no because their employers have power over them (threat to report to police, etc). In many sense, "illegal" migrant workers are not that different from "illegal" immigrants. In order to raise the living standards of an entire area, you have to enforce issues like safe labor practice, minimum wage, vacation days, etc. Without heavy hand regulation in a developing countries, these things don't magically come at the kindness of employers. They must be forced. The developed countries all went through this stage much earlier this century (think back on all the activists who died pushing for labor rights in U.S. in early 1900s). When you have a massive population of people who are in dire situations and who don't have anywhere to turn, it's difficult to force employers to raise working standards. It's a difficult issue. On one hand, it's pretty heavy handed and inhuman to tell a migrant worker they're not allowed to live in a city that's part of their own damn country. On the other hand, we don't want cities to race to the bottom with unsanitary and slum like conditions. What's the balance? I've no idea, but I'm glad Shanghai at least understands this is a problem instead of copying other Asian cities that have failed at this

velodrome 9y ago

Maybe, this is their way of directing people into the vacant "ghost" cities.