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There was an article in the WSJ yesterday that called the last 20 years of GE under CEO under Jeff Immelt “success theater” due to the underlying rot. China is

There was an article in the WSJ yesterday that called the last 20 years of GE under CEO under Jeff Immelt “success theater” due to the underlying rot. China is a country of “business theater”. They sure look like they’re doing business, lots of factories, tons of people in suits, cargo container ships, etc. But it’s all just a lie. It’s nothing but the 21st century planned economy version of the Soviet Union. It’s not even communism as much as simple totalitarianism. The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is if more than 50,000,000 million people are going to die, which was the same amount in 1958-1963 that died in totalitarian China, a number greater than the USSR and the Holocaust combined I would like to add. Capitalism in the US sucks, but it’s very fixable. Capitalism in the 1910’s was far more horrible, but it was fixed beyond even today with the reforms of the 30’s-50’s, so I don’t want anyone to think my criticism of China is some apologia for capitalism right now. This I do not believe in / don’t want to, but just so everyone is aware, the theory that really propelled Trump into office was that of the “fourth turning”, which Steve Bannon was a huge believer in. Essentially it’s the belief that every 80-90 years a massive war and change in Western government happens, stretching back to the British defeat of the Armada in 1588. As Christopher Coker wrote in “The Improbable War”, the next World War is most likely with China, a county with the manpower and resources to fight a grinding global battle against the US. We will see. https://www.amazon.com/Improbable-War-United-States-Conflict/dp/0199396272 https://www.amazon.com/Improbable-War-United-States-Conflict...

ghostcluster 9y ago
Everyone points to automation as the savior, but where is the Chinese Caterpillar? The Chinese Bosch? As far as I can tell, they still rely primarily on companies from the US, Japan, and Germany for their automated heavy industry. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japanese-robot-maker-taps-China-s-demand-for-automation https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japanese-robot-ma...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  There's multiple Chinese heavy equipment manufacturers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Heavy_machinery_manufacturers_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Heavy_machinery_manuf... Have you compared sales numbers? The LiuGong article shows equipment used in other Asian countries and Africa.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  China was able to copy Caterpillar very effectively, to the point where they are now eating Caterpillar's lunch. It is much harder for them to copy the precision machinery that German companies wouldn't dare to think of JV-ing in China.
sct202 9y ago
I think that you're missing the giant change that happened in the 1980s when China allowed people to openly amass wealth and start businesses. All of this led to all of the businesses and factories that you call fake. If they kept trying to run a Soviet-style command economy they'd be at the same level of development as North Korea, with their fake grocery stores, rolling blackouts, and constant famine.
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  Except now they're cracking down on foreign capital ownership from domestic businesses and private citizens
cylinder 9y ago
What does totalitarianism have to do with them doing business? China produces stuff I want. And increasingly, China produces stuff China wants. This is business. There will never be a world war again, the US cannot sustain a real war against China at all, it will just use nukes (or China will). Why do Americans fantasize about war so much?!
- aianus 9y ago
  > China produces stuff I want China produces almost nothing I want unless you count foreign-designed products that happen to be manufactured there under contract. Maybe steel and rare earth metals? I've tried their flagship apps too (WeChat, Alipay, Alibaba, AliExpress) and they are just really awful compared to their Western equivalents. Not just in subjective look-and-feel ways either: the AliExpress signup flow was so broken in their iOS app that I had to switch to a web browser to sign up! That they're useful and popular in China is something that has occurred in spite of their awful tech. More through great business development and exploiting a total lack of entrenched non-tech competition like credit cards, consumer banking, malls, Wal-Mart, etc.
  - bobosha 9y ago
    IMHO wechat is light years ahead of any other competitor (western or chinese) in UX and the smoothness of its functionality.
  - geomark 9y ago
    Curious, what would you consider the western equivalent of AliExpress to be?
    - aianus 9y ago
      Amazon Marketplace or Ebay
    - timscullin 9y ago
      https://thieve.co/ https://thieve.co/
bsaul 9y ago
You seem to think china is one massive block of people all thinking the same. Being there at the present time, i see a society full of very independant, almost libertarian people, very hard to govern, that are thriving to do business, from 1-shop man to big businessmen. And the young generation (<35) is 100% oriented toward the western way of life. My feeling is that if a war should happen it will be a civil war between China government and chineese people, maybe once the economical boom begins to slow and people stop making fortunes (unless americans start to screw up so massively that they become unattractive as a lifestyle model, that is).
- incompatible 9y ago
  It seems that whenever there's a conflict between a segment of the population in China and the government, the government always wins. The Tiananmen Square protests didn't lead to democracy, Hong Kong protests don't change anything, Tibet and Xinjiang are still suppressed, Taiwan is still bullied, Gui Minhai is still secretly imprisoned and probably tortured, and any foreign web site that reports on any of this is banned in China.
  - Arn_Thor 9y ago
    Yes, specific agendas face a nearly immovable object in the CCP in high-profile issues or examples. This is because the CCP cannot afford to appear movable. But on a local level it's actually surprisingly responsive. Many an industrial project has been shuttered or aborted during construction due to local opposition. This is especially the case for environmental concerns. But local groups have also successfully forced the national party to reform the local chapter to clean up corruption, or lobbied for freedom to do certain kinds of business. (It's not all democratic, it certainly helps to have wealthy backers for these interests)
tim333 9y ago
For "business theatre" they've made an awful lot of money. Now #1 in the world by ppp gdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
- John_KZ 9y ago
  These threads about China are full of passive-agressive comments, many of which are so delusional it's sad. Yes, China might be a threat. I'm not American but I'm in Europe and if the US empire falls I'll be in trouble too. But people need to man up and face the reality. Yes, China is growing strong, but there's nothing wrong with it. 1,350 Million people now live lives that don't feel like literal hell. That's a good thing in my book, and I can't wait for latin america and more asian countries to take off too. People living healthy happy secure lives is ok, even if it makes some of us over here feel a bit uncomfortable. Not to mention that their rising wages will finally stop the financial stagnation of the west, especially Europe, which is suffering with high unemployemnt due to the competition with the Chinese.
Arn_Thor 9y ago
I take it the industrial revolution, too, was just a mirage that soon will unravel, leaving us rubbing our eyes in confusion?
intended 9y ago
At this point this is hearsay. Sure, Hong kong submitted financial documents are opaque (to be generous) on a regular basis. There could be massive falsehood underlying a lot of China's numbers. But at the same time, they also are producing vast amounts of goods. If their numbers are fake, those fake numbers are good enough for them to bully their neighbors, set up billion dollar ports, give billion dollar loans, and create the massive OBOR project. And no, in the intervening years many of the claims of democracy proponents have failed to come true. China thrived because of its opaque crack down on free speech, the people who rose up did not survive if they rose up at all. It is also quite likely that China is immune to the kind of issues of foreign funded news articles that western firms are open to. And China has objectively uplifted one of the largest chunks of human population to a better life than what they had before. It a life many people would not countenance in the west, but its better than what the options were before. Unless someone has hard facts, to indicate exactly how deep the rot is - its speculation. The facts and actions of China which are observable tend to hold more weight

ghostcluster 9y ago

Everyone points to automation as the savior, but where is the Chinese Caterpillar? The Chinese Bosch? As far as I can tell, they still rely primarily on companies from the US, Japan, and Germany for their automated heavy industry. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japanese-robot-maker-taps-China-s-demand-for-automation https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Japanese-robot-ma...

maxerickson 9y ago
There's multiple Chinese heavy equipment manufacturers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Heavy_machinery_manufacturers_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Heavy_machinery_manuf... Have you compared sales numbers? The LiuGong article shows equipment used in other Asian countries and Africa.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
China was able to copy Caterpillar very effectively, to the point where they are now eating Caterpillar's lunch. It is much harder for them to copy the precision machinery that German companies wouldn't dare to think of JV-ing in China.

sct202 9y ago

I think that you're missing the giant change that happened in the 1980s when China allowed people to openly amass wealth and start businesses. All of this led to all of the businesses and factories that you call fake. If they kept trying to run a Soviet-style command economy they'd be at the same level of development as North Korea, with their fake grocery stores, rolling blackouts, and constant famine.

ghostcluster 9y ago
Except now they're cracking down on foreign capital ownership from domestic businesses and private citizens

cylinder 9y ago

What does totalitarianism have to do with them doing business? China produces stuff I want. And increasingly, China produces stuff China wants. This is business. There will never be a world war again, the US cannot sustain a real war against China at all, it will just use nukes (or China will). Why do Americans fantasize about war so much?!

aianus 9y ago
> China produces stuff I want China produces almost nothing I want unless you count foreign-designed products that happen to be manufactured there under contract. Maybe steel and rare earth metals? I've tried their flagship apps too (WeChat, Alipay, Alibaba, AliExpress) and they are just really awful compared to their Western equivalents. Not just in subjective look-and-feel ways either: the AliExpress signup flow was so broken in their iOS app that I had to switch to a web browser to sign up! That they're useful and popular in China is something that has occurred in spite of their awful tech. More through great business development and exploiting a total lack of entrenched non-tech competition like credit cards, consumer banking, malls, Wal-Mart, etc.
- bobosha 9y ago
  IMHO wechat is light years ahead of any other competitor (western or chinese) in UX and the smoothness of its functionality.
- geomark 9y ago
  Curious, what would you consider the western equivalent of AliExpress to be?
  - aianus 9y ago
    Amazon Marketplace or Ebay
  - timscullin 9y ago
    https://thieve.co/ https://thieve.co/

bsaul 9y ago

You seem to think china is one massive block of people all thinking the same. Being there at the present time, i see a society full of very independant, almost libertarian people, very hard to govern, that are thriving to do business, from 1-shop man to big businessmen. And the young generation (<35) is 100% oriented toward the western way of life. My feeling is that if a war should happen it will be a civil war between China government and chineese people, maybe once the economical boom begins to slow and people stop making fortunes (unless americans start to screw up so massively that they become unattractive as a lifestyle model, that is).

incompatible 9y ago
It seems that whenever there's a conflict between a segment of the population in China and the government, the government always wins. The Tiananmen Square protests didn't lead to democracy, Hong Kong protests don't change anything, Tibet and Xinjiang are still suppressed, Taiwan is still bullied, Gui Minhai is still secretly imprisoned and probably tortured, and any foreign web site that reports on any of this is banned in China.
- Arn_Thor 9y ago
  Yes, specific agendas face a nearly immovable object in the CCP in high-profile issues or examples. This is because the CCP cannot afford to appear movable. But on a local level it's actually surprisingly responsive. Many an industrial project has been shuttered or aborted during construction due to local opposition. This is especially the case for environmental concerns. But local groups have also successfully forced the national party to reform the local chapter to clean up corruption, or lobbied for freedom to do certain kinds of business. (It's not all democratic, it certainly helps to have wealthy backers for these interests)

tim333 9y ago

For "business theatre" they've made an awful lot of money. Now #1 in the world by ppp gdp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

John_KZ 9y ago
These threads about China are full of passive-agressive comments, many of which are so delusional it's sad. Yes, China might be a threat. I'm not American but I'm in Europe and if the US empire falls I'll be in trouble too. But people need to man up and face the reality. Yes, China is growing strong, but there's nothing wrong with it. 1,350 Million people now live lives that don't feel like literal hell. That's a good thing in my book, and I can't wait for latin america and more asian countries to take off too. People living healthy happy secure lives is ok, even if it makes some of us over here feel a bit uncomfortable. Not to mention that their rising wages will finally stop the financial stagnation of the west, especially Europe, which is suffering with high unemployemnt due to the competition with the Chinese.

Arn_Thor 9y ago

I take it the industrial revolution, too, was just a mirage that soon will unravel, leaving us rubbing our eyes in confusion?

intended 9y ago

At this point this is hearsay. Sure, Hong kong submitted financial documents are opaque (to be generous) on a regular basis. There could be massive falsehood underlying a lot of China's numbers. But at the same time, they also are producing vast amounts of goods. If their numbers are fake, those fake numbers are good enough for them to bully their neighbors, set up billion dollar ports, give billion dollar loans, and create the massive OBOR project. And no, in the intervening years many of the claims of democracy proponents have failed to come true. China thrived because of its opaque crack down on free speech, the people who rose up did not survive if they rose up at all. It is also quite likely that China is immune to the kind of issues of foreign funded news articles that western firms are open to. And China has objectively uplifted one of the largest chunks of human population to a better life than what they had before. It a life many people would not countenance in the west, but its better than what the options were before. Unless someone has hard facts, to indicate exactly how deep the rot is - its speculation. The facts and actions of China which are observable tend to hold more weight