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Could someone key me in to this? I thought generally the Chinese government never shied away from stepping in and manipulating things. Recent trends (for exampl

Could someone key me in to this? I thought generally the Chinese government never shied away from stepping in and manipulating things. Recent trends (for example, the government blaming young people themselves for their low employment numbers) feels like they imported the bootstraps mindset from American politicians, which seems out of step with what was seen as them being rather direct in control of their economy. Recent actions from the government seem to be opposite this.

zeroCalories 3y ago
Chinese control of their economy isn't about altruistically helping everyone. A cynical perspective is that this is just more class conflict born from an Animal Farm style revolution.
bobthepanda 3y ago
So it depends on who’s holding the bag. A lot of what counts as government spending is actually the central government telling provinces and cities to spend. Except those also have heavy debt burdens after years of stimulus. Very little central government money is trickling down. And the problem is not just that the developers are out of money, but their contractors have not been paid for months, those contractors have not paid their suppliers or workers for months, and down the line.
Sakos 3y ago
They seem to be aware of the dangers of perverse market incentives and they also know the real estate market is completely shot. Propping up Evergrande doesn't fix the underlying issues while letting it fail would not just wipe out the wealthy, it would have severe negative impact on the middle class and everybody working in construction. People here are all "let it fail" and don't seem to care about how many millions of people would be drastically affected. These are people's lives we're talking about. Stop waving it away as if it doesn't matter. The callousness here is appalling. Also, don't look at what some politician says, regardless of country. What's important is what they do about perceived issues.

zeroCalories 3y ago

Chinese control of their economy isn't about altruistically helping everyone. A cynical perspective is that this is just more class conflict born from an Animal Farm style revolution.

bobthepanda 3y ago

So it depends on who’s holding the bag. A lot of what counts as government spending is actually the central government telling provinces and cities to spend. Except those also have heavy debt burdens after years of stimulus. Very little central government money is trickling down. And the problem is not just that the developers are out of money, but their contractors have not been paid for months, those contractors have not paid their suppliers or workers for months, and down the line.

Sakos 3y ago

They seem to be aware of the dangers of perverse market incentives and they also know the real estate market is completely shot. Propping up Evergrande doesn't fix the underlying issues while letting it fail would not just wipe out the wealthy, it would have severe negative impact on the middle class and everybody working in construction. People here are all "let it fail" and don't seem to care about how many millions of people would be drastically affected. These are people's lives we're talking about. Stop waving it away as if it doesn't matter. The callousness here is appalling. Also, don't look at what some politician says, regardless of country. What's important is what they do about perceived issues.