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QiuShi is the official political theory magazine of the CCP, and they are now openly discussing 内卷, which has many names in English - involution, overproduction

by dluan 1y ago

QiuShi is the official political theory magazine of the CCP, and they are now openly discussing 内卷, which has many names in English - involution, overproduction, overcompetition, race to the bottom, diminishing marginal benefits, etc. Most people outside of China know the symptoms of it as 996, aka China's recent phenomena of overwork. But really it's just personal and corporate competition taken to the extreme, spreading from the economy to high school students taking gaokao. It's pretty radical that the government is openly acknowledging this, but also that they are signaling that this is a problem to solve.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
What has caused the CCP to focus on this suddenly? Declining fertility rates (~1 TFR)? Or something else?
- dluan 1y ago
  If I had to guess, it's many factors all combining. The main one has to be the economic one, which is that intense over-competition between companies is now affecting domestic production - the race to the bottom is no longer producing the profits it used to when it was competing for overseas customers, and is now undercutting domestic production. Another is definitely declining birth rates, though this is happening worldwide, but a lot of people seem to think juan is also a factor. It's not necessarily that the amount of money needed to start a family and have kids is too high, but just that young people are delaying it more and more. Plus the recent economic downturn and too many educated young unemployed people. This whole thing started off as an internet meme in 2018 with a video of Tsinghua university students riding home on bicycles, and there's one kid with a laptop open studying while riding a bike. Then in classic internet fashion, it escalated with other photos of someone eating noodles while studying while riding a bike, and it continues. The concept is now a part of daily life for a lot of people. Though, this was studied and acknowledged in past theoretical work, notably Indonesia's agricultural development where it was studied. But these days it feels like a catch-all sort of easy to blame reason for daily life getting harder. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/ws/635/cpsprodpb/1628E/production/_118766709_377adab44aed2e73f747cb0139deff8c86d6fa5c.jpg.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/ws/635/cpsprodpb/1628E/producti...
- powerapple 1y ago
  CCP has a backlog of tasks, ordered by priority, every year, this list is evaluated, every 5 years, the priority is adjusted. This topic would have been discussed for sometimes in the past until it surfaces for a broader discussion, followed by think tanks, policy making.
maxglute 1y ago
>which has many names in English - involution, overproduction, overcompetition, race to the bottom, diminishing marginal benefits English/western reporting/propaganda conflates "involution" with those other terms, well specifically geopolitical narratives like overproduction aka PRC is producing too much, relying too much on external demand. AKA PRC should export less and consume more, where export less = western incumbents can hold on to more market share. Of course this is ridiculous and not what PRC wants. QS / PRC does not care about "overproduction" i.e. they will always want MORE PRC exports to capture more market share at the expense of western competitors. What QS and general recent discussiong around "involution" specifically is domestic economic-industrial, i.e. competitive environment where well resourced players, especially those supported / aligned with local govs (that compete with other players supported by other local govs), who compete with each other using tactics that is affecting upstream / downstream industries and absolutely murdering profits which undermining the economic chain. Jurisdictional protectionism is causing dysfunctional mode of internal competition that’s leading in aggregate to wasteful, self cannibalizing behaviour that hurts domestic sectors built up to out compete foreign players (with profit). Regardless, this is how IT SHOULD work under typical PRC overcapacity strategy, develop lots of players, they compete and kill each other, winners consolidate / eat losers, group of winners return to profitability with extremely developed industrial chain. Keep in mind the timeline of big pivot to high tech manufacturing post 3RL/real estate crackdown especially in auto, i.e. it's only been ~5 years or so. CCP/QuiShi is annoyed some local govs are keeping the taps flowing to losers and prolonging bleed to prospective winners who need to slit throats elsewhere - inefficient players aren't exiting fast enough because there's still sources of life support. CCP telling local govs to prepare because central gov coming to pull plugs. Overwork/edtech involution is a separate subject.
- dluan 1y ago
  I've seen the complaints about juan eating into domestic demand, esp among existing domestic firms. There's definitely the "wasteful effort" aspect of this but that would be solved by any normal market conditions. The thing that I'm interested in is the cultural aspect though - because how do you stamp out extreme competition while the take home profits and margins keep falling? This was a trend that started before trade war, and was definitely exacerbated by it. But it feels like (to my outsider uneducated view) that there will need to be some central regulation of this, beyond just hoping for a correction to rebalance the economy.
gavinray 1y ago
Wiki link for anyone else who was curious what exactly this word/phenomena is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan

by dluan 1y ago

toomuchtodo 1y ago

What has caused the CCP to focus on this suddenly? Declining fertility rates (~1 TFR)? Or something else?

dluan 1y ago
If I had to guess, it's many factors all combining. The main one has to be the economic one, which is that intense over-competition between companies is now affecting domestic production - the race to the bottom is no longer producing the profits it used to when it was competing for overseas customers, and is now undercutting domestic production. Another is definitely declining birth rates, though this is happening worldwide, but a lot of people seem to think juan is also a factor. It's not necessarily that the amount of money needed to start a family and have kids is too high, but just that young people are delaying it more and more. Plus the recent economic downturn and too many educated young unemployed people. This whole thing started off as an internet meme in 2018 with a video of Tsinghua university students riding home on bicycles, and there's one kid with a laptop open studying while riding a bike. Then in classic internet fashion, it escalated with other photos of someone eating noodles while studying while riding a bike, and it continues. The concept is now a part of daily life for a lot of people. Though, this was studied and acknowledged in past theoretical work, notably Indonesia's agricultural development where it was studied. But these days it feels like a catch-all sort of easy to blame reason for daily life getting harder. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/ws/635/cpsprodpb/1628E/production/_118766709_377adab44aed2e73f747cb0139deff8c86d6fa5c.jpg.webp https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/ws/635/cpsprodpb/1628E/producti...
powerapple 1y ago
CCP has a backlog of tasks, ordered by priority, every year, this list is evaluated, every 5 years, the priority is adjusted. This topic would have been discussed for sometimes in the past until it surfaces for a broader discussion, followed by think tanks, policy making.

maxglute 1y ago

>which has many names in English - involution, overproduction, overcompetition, race to the bottom, diminishing marginal benefits English/western reporting/propaganda conflates "involution" with those other terms, well specifically geopolitical narratives like overproduction aka PRC is producing too much, relying too much on external demand. AKA PRC should export less and consume more, where export less = western incumbents can hold on to more market share. Of course this is ridiculous and not what PRC wants. QS / PRC does not care about "overproduction" i.e. they will always want MORE PRC exports to capture more market share at the expense of western competitors. What QS and general recent discussiong around "involution" specifically is domestic economic-industrial, i.e. competitive environment where well resourced players, especially those supported / aligned with local govs (that compete with other players supported by other local govs), who compete with each other using tactics that is affecting upstream / downstream industries and absolutely murdering profits which undermining the economic chain. Jurisdictional protectionism is causing dysfunctional mode of internal competition that’s leading in aggregate to wasteful, self cannibalizing behaviour that hurts domestic sectors built up to out compete foreign players (with profit). Regardless, this is how IT SHOULD work under typical PRC overcapacity strategy, develop lots of players, they compete and kill each other, winners consolidate / eat losers, group of winners return to profitability with extremely developed industrial chain. Keep in mind the timeline of big pivot to high tech manufacturing post 3RL/real estate crackdown especially in auto, i.e. it's only been ~5 years or so. CCP/QuiShi is annoyed some local govs are keeping the taps flowing to losers and prolonging bleed to prospective winners who need to slit throats elsewhere - inefficient players aren't exiting fast enough because there's still sources of life support. CCP telling local govs to prepare because central gov coming to pull plugs. Overwork/edtech involution is a separate subject.

dluan 1y ago
I've seen the complaints about juan eating into domestic demand, esp among existing domestic firms. There's definitely the "wasteful effort" aspect of this but that would be solved by any normal market conditions. The thing that I'm interested in is the cultural aspect though - because how do you stamp out extreme competition while the take home profits and margins keep falling? This was a trend that started before trade war, and was definitely exacerbated by it. But it feels like (to my outsider uneducated view) that there will need to be some central regulation of this, beyond just hoping for a correction to rebalance the economy.

gavinray 1y ago

Wiki link for anyone else who was curious what exactly this word/phenomena is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan