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China's current state - Complete shutdown of all businesses not related to pharmacy or hospital, probably until April 2023. This includes factories. Check ou

China's current state - Complete shutdown of all businesses not related to pharmacy or hospital, probably until April 2023. This includes factories. Check out on the ground videos by https://www.youtube.com/@xiaorenwu/videos https://www.youtube.com/@xiaorenwu/videos, you will see completely empty malls, subways, and streets. Not only that, you will note all the anger from normal citizens, which is only really publicly visible this year. EDIT: the shutdown is either mandated by city, or voluntarily by the merchant, since nobody is traveling out to shop in fear of contracting covid. - Few hundred thousand small and mid size business closures/bankruptcies. China does not provide small business relief like US did, so these closures are permanent. - 37 million covid infections per day https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-estimates-covid-surge-is-infecting-37-million-people-a-day https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-23/china-est..., millions of death per day that overwhelms the morgue. Keep in mind their vaccine is ineffective, and re-infection likely to last throughout 2023 - Market laggards like Apple finally moving out of China, and the rest of manufacturing laggards to follow - Multinational consumer product companies moving out of China or reducing footprint - Real estate collapse still unresolved - Demographics collapse still unresolved - Total debt still unresolved - Closer alliance with Russia, and alienation from democratic countries. QUAD, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Europe all are aligning against China and Russia now. So China's only card it can play is, being as sick as it is for at least a year more, is to be a paper tiger. and threatens with empty promise.

gsatic 4y ago
Some people were saying similar things during the Hong Kong protests. We know how that turned out.
antifanboy 4y ago
[dead]
markdown 4y ago
> So China's only card it can play is, being as sick as it is for at least a year more, is to be a paper tiger. and threatens with empty promise. Everything you wrote before this, and in particular "you will note all the anger from normal citizens" is reason enough to worry that this time it might be more than an empty promise. China may end up needing more than sabre rattling to distract its citizens this time.
winrid 4y ago
The first bullet isn't completely true. Some cities are opening up and going out of lockdown, people are fed up. I know people in Korla that got together and protested at the police station, and that city is no longer under lock down. China also just lifted the travel quarantine requirement...
- bigcat12345678 4y ago
  None of the bullets are true... It's not even remotely logical...
Manuel_D 4y ago
Millions of deaths per day is just outright fantasy. It's estimated that total COVID deaths China will occur now that they're pivoting from zero COVID to herd immunity will be 2-3 million. Not to mention, the vast majority of people adversely affected by COVID aren't military age. China still would lose far more than it'd gain from invading Taiwan. This [1] does a good analysis of the geopolitical consequences of such an action. That said, the same was true about Russia invading Ukraine, but it happened anyway. The right path is to do rigorous analysis but be honest about the uncertainty. 1. https://www.csis.org/analysis/reunification-taiwan-through-force-would-be-pyrrhic-victory-china https://www.csis.org/analysis/reunification-taiwan-through-f...
bigcat12345678 4y ago
[flagged]
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  You should have stuck to your first point. Handwaving the real estate bubble was a bad look.
  - bigcat12345678 4y ago
    Who can describe Chinese real estate bubble without handwaving is itself a charlatan, or God himself That still does not change the fact that the op is clueless
jjoonathan 4y ago
I've seen these arguments turned on their head. From the perspective of a cynical elite, war solves many of these problems. * Angry populace? Give them a fresh target for the anger and a fresh rationalization for their suffering. * Small business apocalypse? Re-tooling for war creates an abundance of new opportunity. * Loads of debt? Use war as an excuse to default. It is uniquely positioned to rationalize default while minimally impacting credit worthiness going forward. * Trust issues in savings and real estate? War bonds are totally different! * Spare men? Send them to die in war. It's the historical solution to the problem. My inability to assign likelihoods to these bags of problems really demonstrates how little I know about national policy. Then again, wars have historically caught many experts flat-footed, so perhaps nobody else knows very much either.
rfoo 4y ago
> probably until April 2023 On the ground in Beijing. I don't know what happened last week / the week before, was sick enough. However restaurants were all f-ing full on Christmas Eve. It seems like that China just played the herd immunity card and get a really sharp wave due to Omicron and ineffective vaccines.

gsatic 4y ago

Some people were saying similar things during the Hong Kong protests. We know how that turned out.

antifanboy 4y ago

[dead]

markdown 4y ago

> So China's only card it can play is, being as sick as it is for at least a year more, is to be a paper tiger. and threatens with empty promise. Everything you wrote before this, and in particular "you will note all the anger from normal citizens" is reason enough to worry that this time it might be more than an empty promise. China may end up needing more than sabre rattling to distract its citizens this time.

winrid 4y ago

The first bullet isn't completely true. Some cities are opening up and going out of lockdown, people are fed up. I know people in Korla that got together and protested at the police station, and that city is no longer under lock down. China also just lifted the travel quarantine requirement...

bigcat12345678 4y ago
None of the bullets are true... It's not even remotely logical...

Manuel_D 4y ago

Millions of deaths per day is just outright fantasy. It's estimated that total COVID deaths China will occur now that they're pivoting from zero COVID to herd immunity will be 2-3 million. Not to mention, the vast majority of people adversely affected by COVID aren't military age. China still would lose far more than it'd gain from invading Taiwan. This [1] does a good analysis of the geopolitical consequences of such an action. That said, the same was true about Russia invading Ukraine, but it happened anyway. The right path is to do rigorous analysis but be honest about the uncertainty. 1. https://www.csis.org/analysis/reunification-taiwan-through-force-would-be-pyrrhic-victory-china https://www.csis.org/analysis/reunification-taiwan-through-f...

bigcat12345678 4y ago

[flagged]

jjoonathan 4y ago
You should have stuck to your first point. Handwaving the real estate bubble was a bad look.
- bigcat12345678 4y ago
  Who can describe Chinese real estate bubble without handwaving is itself a charlatan, or God himself That still does not change the fact that the op is clueless

jjoonathan 4y ago

I've seen these arguments turned on their head. From the perspective of a cynical elite, war solves many of these problems. * Angry populace? Give them a fresh target for the anger and a fresh rationalization for their suffering. * Small business apocalypse? Re-tooling for war creates an abundance of new opportunity. * Loads of debt? Use war as an excuse to default. It is uniquely positioned to rationalize default while minimally impacting credit worthiness going forward. * Trust issues in savings and real estate? War bonds are totally different! * Spare men? Send them to die in war. It's the historical solution to the problem. My inability to assign likelihoods to these bags of problems really demonstrates how little I know about national policy. Then again, wars have historically caught many experts flat-footed, so perhaps nobody else knows very much either.

rfoo 4y ago

> probably until April 2023 On the ground in Beijing. I don't know what happened last week / the week before, was sick enough. However restaurants were all f-ing full on Christmas Eve. It seems like that China just played the herd immunity card and get a really sharp wave due to Omicron and ineffective vaccines.