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I think this ignores a few realities: 1) the largest of the economies rising in Asia, being China, is funded in large part by state subsidies to this day. That

I think this ignores a few realities: 1) the largest of the economies rising in Asia, being China, is funded in large part by state subsidies to this day. That won’t last forever. Few wholly Chinese companies that weren’t in Hong Kong before China took it back over have proven they can compete without these subsidies either. 2) As a result of the above, for instance, free market isn’t really “free” and I argue this about USA and EU too, yes, but China still requires that companies be 51 percent Chinese owned by default, hardly free enterprise compared to western economies all other things being equal. At least if I do business in USA or EU I don’t have to cede 51 percent of my companies ownership in that country to do business 3) globally a lot of critical natural resources are dwindling or being threatened due to climate change, depletion / overuse or just plain waste. Helium, for instance, was already a shortage pre pandemic, and is truly non renewable[0]. Oil, natural gas, and other critical resources are also reaching critical threshold levels 4) no country is immune from inequality issues, after all China, Japan and Korea have many historical examples of uprisings and civil unrest due to inequality 5) importantly, the USA is not a democracy, it’s actually a democratic republic [0]: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775554343/the-world-is-constantly-running-out-of-helium-heres-why-it-matters https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775554343/the-world-is-consta...

vkou 5y ago
> 1) the largest of the economies rising in Asia, being China, is funded in large part by state subsidies to this day. That won’t last forever. The power of a sovereign to directly tax, and indirectly inflate its currency says otherwise. You also need to quantify what it means for the economy to 'run off state subsidies'. There are particular sectors of the economy that are subsidized in China. The rest stand on their own. Smart subsidies reduce the overall cost to the economy, by building the foundation on which the rest could be built on. 100% of a state's economy obviously can't run off subsidies. But a smaller percentage can - and when invested smartly, grows the rest of the economy. Do you have any numbers for which fields of China's economy depend on these subsidies, and which percentage of those fields those subsidies represent?
- no_wizard 5y ago
  The 51% ownership clause is a subsidy. Chinese government still subsidies construction industry and the manufacturing sector, as well as tech[0] At least 3% of the entire state budget is dedicated just to subsidies, this does not include tax breaks or other special incentives and this has been growing steadily[1][2] [0]: https://www.uscc.gov/files/000566 https://www.uscc.gov/files/000566 [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/initial-us-china-trade-deal-has-major-hole-beijings-massive-business-subsidies/2019/12/30/f4de4d14-22a3-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/initial-us-c... [2]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-subsidies-swell-further-in-2019-as-US-cries-foul https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-su...
  - nl 5y ago
    Do you happen to know what the US equivalent is? Reading [1] it said the company that received the most was Sinopec, with US$450M. But according to [2], Boeing has received over $15B in subsidies since 2000, so roughly comparable. And that doesn't count tax breaks[3] and doesn't seem to include agricultural subsidies which are huge in the US/ [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-subsidies-swell-further-in-2019-as-US-cries-foul https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-su... [2] https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents [3] https://taxbreaktracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?detail=state_list https://taxbreaktracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?detail=st...
nl 5y ago
> importantly, the USA is not a democracy, it’s actually a democratic republic People say this all the time to try to sound wise, but in reality it's sort of a meaningless distinction. There's a wide range of functioning models for democracy, and a democratic republic is just one form of representative democracy: Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy; for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), India (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
- mongol 5y ago
  Agreed. The Meaningful Charts Youtube channel presented it well in a recent video "Should Monarchies exist?" https://youtu.be/dgABWs0SHcE https://youtu.be/dgABWs0SHcE

vkou 5y ago

> 1) the largest of the economies rising in Asia, being China, is funded in large part by state subsidies to this day. That won’t last forever. The power of a sovereign to directly tax, and indirectly inflate its currency says otherwise. You also need to quantify what it means for the economy to 'run off state subsidies'. There are particular sectors of the economy that are subsidized in China. The rest stand on their own. Smart subsidies reduce the overall cost to the economy, by building the foundation on which the rest could be built on. 100% of a state's economy obviously can't run off subsidies. But a smaller percentage can - and when invested smartly, grows the rest of the economy. Do you have any numbers for which fields of China's economy depend on these subsidies, and which percentage of those fields those subsidies represent?

no_wizard 5y ago
The 51% ownership clause is a subsidy. Chinese government still subsidies construction industry and the manufacturing sector, as well as tech[0] At least 3% of the entire state budget is dedicated just to subsidies, this does not include tax breaks or other special incentives and this has been growing steadily[1][2] [0]: https://www.uscc.gov/files/000566 https://www.uscc.gov/files/000566 [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/initial-us-china-trade-deal-has-major-hole-beijings-massive-business-subsidies/2019/12/30/f4de4d14-22a3-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html?outputType=amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/initial-us-c... [2]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-subsidies-swell-further-in-2019-as-US-cries-foul https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-su...
- nl 5y ago
  Do you happen to know what the US equivalent is? Reading [1] it said the company that received the most was Sinopec, with US$450M. But according to [2], Boeing has received over $15B in subsidies since 2000, so roughly comparable. And that doesn't count tax breaks[3] and doesn't seem to include agricultural subsidies which are huge in the US/ [1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-subsidies-swell-further-in-2019-as-US-cries-foul https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Trade-war/China-corporate-su... [2] https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parents [3] https://taxbreaktracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?detail=state_list https://taxbreaktracker.goodjobsfirst.org/prog.php?detail=st...

nl 5y ago

> importantly, the USA is not a democracy, it’s actually a democratic republic People say this all the time to try to sound wise, but in reality it's sort of a meaningless distinction. There's a wide range of functioning models for democracy, and a democratic republic is just one form of representative democracy: Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of representative democracy; for example, the United Kingdom (a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy), India (a federal parliamentary republic), France (a unitary semi-presidential republic), and the United States (a federal presidential republic). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

mongol 5y ago
Agreed. The Meaningful Charts Youtube channel presented it well in a recent video "Should Monarchies exist?" https://youtu.be/dgABWs0SHcE https://youtu.be/dgABWs0SHcE