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If the Chinese Communist Party really wants to score a win, it can offer a free apartment and residency to anyone from around the world who can pass certain (re

If the Chinese Communist Party really wants to score a win, it can offer a free apartment and residency to anyone from around the world who can pass certain (relatively achievable) minimum requirements (e.g., a college education or trade certification, plus kindergarten-level language skills). I've already found examples of Australians who've responded to Australia's housing crisis by moving to rural China (one opened a restaurant serving an exotic dish called "pizza", made with a wood fired oven). If China really wants to subvert the West, it just needs to show Westerners that life is better under Chinese rule. Which, if they can offer apartments, they might be able to demonstrate. We could use some competition in the government space. Without it, we can expect Western governments to remain captured by, in this case, homeowners.

clouddrover 3y ago
> We could use some competition in the government space. If there's one thing the Chinese Communist Party can't tolerate it's competition in the government space. They don't even tolerate a competition of ideas. Paranoid China wants the Chinese to spy on each other and most especially foreigners: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-17/xi-s-security-obsession-turns-ordinary-citizens-into-spy-hunters https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-17/xi-s-secu... It doesn't matter that it will be ineffective. It doesn't matter that a lot of innocent people will be caught up in it. From the CCP's point of view, the climate of fear it will create is useful for them to retain control. It's a dumb game to play, but apparently it's all the CCP can think to do at this point.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  Ok, that sounds pretty awful, so let me put my post in a little more context, lest it appear that I'm just cheerleading a bad government. There's this idea that one of the reasons that US workers (and workers in the West more generally) had a relatively good standard of living during the Cold War, was that Western countries were facing competition from the Soviet Union. Would Britain have built all that social housing? Would it have created the NHS? Would America have permitted as much unionization as existed? Possibly not, if it weren't for the Soviet threat. And is it a coincidence that we had waves of privitization in the West at the same time that the Soviet Union was collapsing? So goes the thinking. Now, the reality was that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and it's unlikely that you'd actually want to live there. Granted, they may have done certain things well, like putting up Khrushchevkas. But the political situation was terrible and the material quality of life was not very good. Nevertheless, maybe the existence of a competitor did spur the US and other countries to do better. (There are other more cut-and-dry examples of this, e.g., much earlier, Bismarck outflanking the Socialists in Germany with state healthcare.) And, for all the negatives of the Chinese system today, it's hard to argue that they don't build a lot very quickly. (Quality may be an issue sometimes, but I'm still impressed by a lot of what's accomplished.) So, my half-tongue-in-cheek proposal is that China use its known strengths to offer a better deal than Western governments can, not just to e.g. African nations via BRI, but also to Western and even US citizens. It's not really that I think Westerners would be wise to go there (I know full well that there must be a propaganda element to the example of the Australians that I used). It's that Western leaders seem entirely content to let lucrative problems like the housing crisis fester, and it would be fantastic if there were some credible alternative to spur action. Basically, life should be better for citizens if governments are competing for legitimacy with them.
  - clouddrover 3y ago
    > it's hard to argue that they don't build a lot very quickly The problem the article discusses is that they've built too much too quickly. There's no one to buy or use it. Oversupply isn't useful and it costs a lot. Same situation with EVs. EV oversupply is neither economic nor environmental: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ > Basically, life should be better for citizens if governments are competing for legitimacy with them. You're inventing democracy. China doesn't like democracy. Taiwan likes democracy. China's determined to take over Taiwan, no matter what the Taiwanese think about it. China's quite happy to invade Taiwan to get it done: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/china-unveils-taiwan-economic-integration-plan-as-warships-conduct-manoeuvres-off-coast https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/china-unveils-... China's message is "Fuck your democracy. Submit or we will invade and kill you until whoever is left submits". So much for the competition of governments and the betterment of the lives of citizens.
    - dirtyid 3y ago
      No, the problem is PLENTY of people want to buy to speculate in PRC RE bubble, which cost even more in terms of misallocation long term. Hence RE crackdown, now there's vacancy rate / oversupply of ~50m units, which can be soaked up in ~5 years of urbanization. PRC urbanization goal in next 5 years is 65->70%, 75% around 2035, that's 140m bodies = more than 50m households. That's not even considering many of these vacant units are for 10s of millions of youths kids once they get married. Sure some speculators will get fuckedjust like millions of forclosures in US during GFC, some of the units are genuinely misallocated (poor geography relative to demand etc). That's unavoidable when a bubble gets popped. The current problem isn't excess housing stock, 50m is wasteful but not excessively so buffer. The problem was presales was tying up too much investment in RE, driving up housing prices and affordibility. Central gov wants people to invest in SMIC not Evergrande, so 3RL crackdown which is going to take a few years to unwind as central gov forces developers to finish or return deposits while they're being slowly dismantled - priority is to make buyers whole. In the mean time there's some capital stuck in the system, which is bad but not end of world. Medium long term, PRC's initial shitty housing stock is approaching 50+ years end of life, and demand for new replacement square meter is going to kick in. TLDR is the inefficiency is not primarily the surplus, it's the bubble, and the bubble sapping investments away from other sectors. The entire EV graveyard narrative is extra retardedly overblown by western media (like bike graveyards). There's a few car share fleet graveyard and subsidy scams amounting to a few 100s of thousands of heavily used urban fleet cars or useless scam chasis. This is out of growing 2-3m total car share fleet and projected 100s of millions of future EV sales. Now both sectors have or is active being consolidated to drive out bad players. Bluntly, it's fucking nothing, a few billion in waste vs 100s of billions gained per year in building new sector. Hurricanes destroy significantly more cars than that every few years in the US. Like everytime PRC decides to go HAM on pursuing an sector, there's some initial overcapacity and waste but things even out when sector matures. Ask any auto export power if they would waste a few billion dollars and few hundred thousand scraped hulls to be where PRC EV is now, and they'd say yes to a trade 10x that.

clouddrover 3y ago

> We could use some competition in the government space. If there's one thing the Chinese Communist Party can't tolerate it's competition in the government space. They don't even tolerate a competition of ideas. Paranoid China wants the Chinese to spy on each other and most especially foreigners: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-17/xi-s-security-obsession-turns-ordinary-citizens-into-spy-hunters https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-17/xi-s-secu... It doesn't matter that it will be ineffective. It doesn't matter that a lot of innocent people will be caught up in it. From the CCP's point of view, the climate of fear it will create is useful for them to retain control. It's a dumb game to play, but apparently it's all the CCP can think to do at this point.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Ok, that sounds pretty awful, so let me put my post in a little more context, lest it appear that I'm just cheerleading a bad government. There's this idea that one of the reasons that US workers (and workers in the West more generally) had a relatively good standard of living during the Cold War, was that Western countries were facing competition from the Soviet Union. Would Britain have built all that social housing? Would it have created the NHS? Would America have permitted as much unionization as existed? Possibly not, if it weren't for the Soviet threat. And is it a coincidence that we had waves of privitization in the West at the same time that the Soviet Union was collapsing? So goes the thinking. Now, the reality was that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and it's unlikely that you'd actually want to live there. Granted, they may have done certain things well, like putting up Khrushchevkas. But the political situation was terrible and the material quality of life was not very good. Nevertheless, maybe the existence of a competitor did spur the US and other countries to do better. (There are other more cut-and-dry examples of this, e.g., much earlier, Bismarck outflanking the Socialists in Germany with state healthcare.) And, for all the negatives of the Chinese system today, it's hard to argue that they don't build a lot very quickly. (Quality may be an issue sometimes, but I'm still impressed by a lot of what's accomplished.) So, my half-tongue-in-cheek proposal is that China use its known strengths to offer a better deal than Western governments can, not just to e.g. African nations via BRI, but also to Western and even US citizens. It's not really that I think Westerners would be wise to go there (I know full well that there must be a propaganda element to the example of the Australians that I used). It's that Western leaders seem entirely content to let lucrative problems like the housing crisis fester, and it would be fantastic if there were some credible alternative to spur action. Basically, life should be better for citizens if governments are competing for legitimacy with them.
- clouddrover 3y ago
  > it's hard to argue that they don't build a lot very quickly The problem the article discusses is that they've built too much too quickly. There's no one to buy or use it. Oversupply isn't useful and it costs a lot. Same situation with EVs. EV oversupply is neither economic nor environmental: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-china-ev-graveyards/ > Basically, life should be better for citizens if governments are competing for legitimacy with them. You're inventing democracy. China doesn't like democracy. Taiwan likes democracy. China's determined to take over Taiwan, no matter what the Taiwanese think about it. China's quite happy to invade Taiwan to get it done: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/china-unveils-taiwan-economic-integration-plan-as-warships-conduct-manoeuvres-off-coast https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/13/china-unveils-... China's message is "Fuck your democracy. Submit or we will invade and kill you until whoever is left submits". So much for the competition of governments and the betterment of the lives of citizens.
  - dirtyid 3y ago
    No, the problem is PLENTY of people want to buy to speculate in PRC RE bubble, which cost even more in terms of misallocation long term. Hence RE crackdown, now there's vacancy rate / oversupply of ~50m units, which can be soaked up in ~5 years of urbanization. PRC urbanization goal in next 5 years is 65->70%, 75% around 2035, that's 140m bodies = more than 50m households. That's not even considering many of these vacant units are for 10s of millions of youths kids once they get married. Sure some speculators will get fuckedjust like millions of forclosures in US during GFC, some of the units are genuinely misallocated (poor geography relative to demand etc). That's unavoidable when a bubble gets popped. The current problem isn't excess housing stock, 50m is wasteful but not excessively so buffer. The problem was presales was tying up too much investment in RE, driving up housing prices and affordibility. Central gov wants people to invest in SMIC not Evergrande, so 3RL crackdown which is going to take a few years to unwind as central gov forces developers to finish or return deposits while they're being slowly dismantled - priority is to make buyers whole. In the mean time there's some capital stuck in the system, which is bad but not end of world. Medium long term, PRC's initial shitty housing stock is approaching 50+ years end of life, and demand for new replacement square meter is going to kick in. TLDR is the inefficiency is not primarily the surplus, it's the bubble, and the bubble sapping investments away from other sectors. The entire EV graveyard narrative is extra retardedly overblown by western media (like bike graveyards). There's a few car share fleet graveyard and subsidy scams amounting to a few 100s of thousands of heavily used urban fleet cars or useless scam chasis. This is out of growing 2-3m total car share fleet and projected 100s of millions of future EV sales. Now both sectors have or is active being consolidated to drive out bad players. Bluntly, it's fucking nothing, a few billion in waste vs 100s of billions gained per year in building new sector. Hurricanes destroy significantly more cars than that every few years in the US. Like everytime PRC decides to go HAM on pursuing an sector, there's some initial overcapacity and waste but things even out when sector matures. Ask any auto export power if they would waste a few billion dollars and few hundred thousand scraped hulls to be where PRC EV is now, and they'd say yes to a trade 10x that.