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In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever: China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long be
by haunter 1y ago
In the end it's the biggest leopard ate my face moment ever:
China has very high growth momentum that surpasses American living standards soon, and not long before it will surpass American security standards too. China's purchasing power is probably more comfortable than most western countries, with extensive housing and high speed rail and electric cars etc. When a country becomes rich, inevitably other countries ask for their help. That's why China's growth must be curbed, fast > tariff them to their death or so. But I really don't think it will work at all. And personally I don't even think it's a good idea at all to begin with.
- platevoltage 1y agoSee this is what I don't understand. Everything you just said about China is a positive. Everything you said about China is achievable in the USA, and we at least HAD a head start on soft-power influence. Instead we should just have tariffs instead of actually making the lives of Americans better while FIGHTING affordable housing, high speed rail, and EVs. We've got an entire team of goons who would rather rack up penalty minutes than score goals. These freaks think we are competing with China in an MMA fight instead of a Hockey game.
- kimixa 1y agoI feel it's more they're not actually playing for the scoreline. They want to be the team #1, even if that causes the team to lose in the end.
- sneak 1y agoWhen people see everything as an ego-based competition, they lose track entirely of the fact that trade is not zero-sum: both parties (or nations) benefit from increased trade. It’s the zero-sum mindset of leadership that only ever learned to excel by cheating and stealing, not cooperating, building, or synergizing.
- niek_pas 1y agoAnd unfortunately, it is exactly the Gorilla chest-pounding politicians “we are #1” that attract particular large swaths of the voting population who tend to see everything as a “me first” zero-sum competition.
- platevoltage 1y agoI'll add that the team leader doesn't expect to live long enough to see his team lose, and that's all that really matters to him.
- pydry 1y agoThe ironic thing is that tariffs are the right tool to reindustrialize America (over the period of ~a decade) but theyre being wielded with the skill and grace of a crack addled ferret by somebody who thinks it's a magic wand.
- jennyholzer 1y agoi don't see any indication that either republicans or democrats intend to reindustrialize america
- bediger4000 1y agoAgreed. This is hermeneutics for Trump's self enriching or just plain dumb actions.
- estearum 1y agoHere's private construction of manufacturing facilities in the US. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRMFGCON Biden was inaugurated in January 2021 and Trump won the election in November 2024.
- jibal 1y agoBiden's major bills were very much indications of that ... even more so for the version before Manchin took a hatchet to it.
- pydry 1y agoThere is evidence they are trying it just isnt particularly effective. Part of the problem is that it runs up against the corporate lobbies who would rather take a higher short term profit margin, let American industry hollow out and buy gold + a luxury bunker in New Zealand to prep for the worst case scenario.
- selectodude 1y agoReindustrializing America requires people that are actually willing to work in a factory.
- anon291 1y agoYeah it's a crab mentality. I'm ideologically opposed to communism, but I'm happy for the Chinese people. I don't understand why our response is to tear them down, instead of building ourselves up. Seems backwards. When you even mention building ourself, you are accused of being anti American simply because you point out a deficiency in our current development.
- amrocha 1y agoChina is the most capitalist country in the world.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- platevoltage 1y agoI've never been to china, but I've seen pictures. It doesn't look like a stateless, classless, moneyless society at all. To me anyways.
- pillefitz 1y agoAnd of the more communist ones
- mensetmanusman 1y agoLeader for life choosing winners is max capitalism.
- bongodongobob 1y ago[flagged]
- platevoltage 1y agoIs it weird that I get more worked up about the misuse of "literally" than your use of a slur?
- tbossanova 1y agoWhat’s the misuse here?
- jibal 1y agoIt depends on which definition of the word is being used. For the informal one, "very foolish or stupid", it's literally true.
- tbossanova 1y agoI’m still not sure what the misuse is. “Literally” is now commonly used as an intensifier, like how “awesome “ used to mean inspiring awe, including if you were scared of something, and now is mostly an intensifier. Awesome, dude!
- jibal 1y agoC'mon ... you know what "misuse" refers to, even if it's no longer considered to literally be a misuse. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
- tbossanova 1y agoHaha nice meta-usage of literally there
- bongodongobob 1y ago
- ehnto 1y agoI do think the state of progress in China is vastly underestimated by the west. It has been fast and messy, not evenly distributed, but it is staggering. The rhetoric around them is changing too, I think they are making significant soft power gains. I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating.
- generic92034 1y ago> The rhetoric around them is changing too, I think they are making significant soft power gains. I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating. As long as they are cooperating with Russia at least European countries will have a hard time to accept China's advances.
- remus 1y ago> I could easily see them filling the voids that US policy chaos is currently creating. More than that, I think China would be mad not to step into the vacuum the US is creating with it's isolationist policies. For years US aid has been extremely influential around the world, doing a huge amount of good (e.g. USAID) and buying relatively cheap influence in many countries. Countries that were reliant on that aid are going to be understandably jaded by their experience with the US and looking for more reliable allies.
- bavell 1y agoChina has a demographic time-bomb about to go off in the next decade or two. We'll see if they can survive it.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoIt already did, labor force shrunk for the first time a few years ago.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoChina has been making soft power gains for a decade. They are everywhere in Africa. When I went to Macedonia five years ago, there was a giant screen in the main square explaining how their medical cooperation with China was such a boon for the country. China already is a diplomatic giant. I think American are partially blinded by the crazy negative propaganda against China you see all the time in the US. They significantly underestimate where China stands and overestimate the impact American tariffs can have.
- lm28469 1y agoIt's the whole "benevolent" dictatorship VS flawed democracy debate.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoIt might be an authoritarian one party state but China isn't a dictatorship right?
- wood_spirit 1y agoTechnically China is a dictatorship. The constitution of the People's Republic of China and the CCP constitution state that its form of government is "people's democratic dictatorship". The current president has done much to make his appointment for life, so it is a dictatorship that is on the road towards having a dictator. Cue comparisons to what is currently happening in the US.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoYes, 人民民主专政. A socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. I think you're ignoring some of the poetic intention of those words, the idea is that the Marxist collective is the dictator. It's turning the concept on its head to put the people at the forefront. In other contexts such as casual conversation here in the West the term dictatorship means something quite different and you seem to understand that too because you say they're "on the road towards having a dictator" which is surely an admission that they currently do not have a dictator and are ergo but currently a dictatorship. I'll certainly grant you that Xi has made moves to consolidate power in the individual but that's a separate discussion.
- Propelloni 1y agoSo it is a tyranny of the majority? That's not the vibe I get from China at all.
- Der_Einzige 1y agoHockey games are often AS violent as MMA fights with less regulation and more equipment which can cause injury. People really watch Hockey cus they want to see the guys beat each other up - not because they care about the puck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_in_ice_hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_in_ice_hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_ice_hockey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_in_ice_hockey
- platevoltage 1y agoYou missed the point. The point of Hockey is to score the most points, not win the most fights. If fact, you are penalized for fighting. The more violent team often loses the game. The point of MMA is to win the fight by using violence. The people who watch this metaphorical hockey game for the violence have a 4 letter acronym that they label themselves with.
- trasirinc 1y agoWhat numbers are you seeing for the surpassing living standards? Their gpd per capita flatlined in 2024 at $13k. That's with only 80M of their citizens making above $2000/month. The bulk of their citizens make less than $100/month, and there's a declining middle class of around 200M that makes around $800/month. But they have high youth unemployment rate (>40%), there's a massive layoff wave coming in September with the mandatory social security payment from companies, and their recent factory wages have plummeted to $2/hour, barely survivable in first tier cities. Before everyone jumps in with GDP per capital with PPP, what quality at that low price means is tofu dreg buildings, cancerous food items, waist high flooding every summer in cities, ghost buildings, and unsafe water (recently one of the most prosperous city, Hangzhou, had sewage seeped into the water for weeks, which the local government denied responsibility).
- jennyholzer 1y agoWhy are you so well-versed in these anti-Chinese narratives? Your message reads like you're a victim of anti-Chinese propaganda.
- trasirinc 1y agoI'm from China. I know what real numbers and news come out of China.
- collingreen 1y agoI'm from the US. I have no idea what numbers or news are real anymore (if I ever did). I'm impressed by either your ability to discern this for China or by your confidence that you can.
- HAL3000 1y agoSure, you are. You created this account 2 hours ago, all comments anti China, perfect english and you write about China as "their" country in one of the comments.
- 1y ago
- estimator7292 1y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Literally, kill people OP never literally called for killing anyone.
- haunter 1y agoYou are putting words in my mouth I didn’t say. I was just using a realpolitik theory of the tariffs nothing more.
- decimalenough 1y agoThe craziest thing about all this is that Chinese exports to the US aren't even that big a part of the Chinese economy (3% or so). Sure, it'll hurt and there's multiplier effects, but the entire rest of the world is more than happy to take up the slack. So the tariffs really are the US cutting its own nose off to spite its face.
- refurb 1y agoWhat do you mean “the rest of the world will take up the slack”? Is the rest of the world suddenly going to start buying something they haven’t in the past? Why? And the US consumer market is 2x the size of the next biggest (EU). How exactly is the the rest of the world going to replace the demand of something several times its size?
- nemomarx 1y agoIt seems plausible to me that growing markets like India could fill that hole over time, yeah.
- jandrewrogers 1y agoThe “over time” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It won’t happen on anything remotely resembling a time horizon that matters for these purposes. Factories will be closed and gone by then.
- decimalenough 1y agoIf the US buys less, there will be unsold inventory and a temporary glut in supply, which will lead to the Chinese dropping prices and exporting elsewhere. This is already happening in SE Asia: https://www.chiangraitimes.com/china/china-export-dumping/ https://www.chiangraitimes.com/china/china-export-dumping/ Obviously the profit margin will be less than selling to the US, but it does mean that the 3% of GDP mentioned above is not going away entirely, just shrinking to (say) 2 or 2.5%. The article also mentions transshipment, where Chinese goods get routed to the US via a third country. Although Trump's strategy of "tariff everybody for all the things" is putting a damper on this too.
- refurb 1y agoIt’s statements like these that remind me to not take social media so seriously. China does not have “very high grow momentum”, in fact growth has been seriously slowing since Covid I’m not sure sure what “growth momentum” is what it has to do with living standards. China’s PPP is not more comfortable than the US because it’s still 1/4th that of the US. China has very serious growth problems, a massive debt overhang from real estate (that is still slowing the economy), a supply planning model that is leaving it with an oversupply of things like cars and batteries.
- 9dev 1y agoWell, at least Trump is working hard on implementing an American supply planning model as well, so the damn Chinese won’t be leading on oversupply much longer!
- simonh 1y agoBy making the imports needed for domestic production and infrastructure development more expensive through tariffs, before there are domestic alternatives available, and expelling large swathes of the labour force necessary for such construction, no he really isn’t. It would be possible to develop domestic supply capacity, starting with the inputs necessary to feed that development, and then nurture and encourage the process with a targeted ramp up of tariffs. That’s not happening though, instead domestic investment is collapsing.
- ekianjo 1y agoWhen you look at things per Capita in China things look very different from what you describe. Sure, you have pockets of very affluent societies (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and more) but the majority of the country is not there.
- XorNot 1y ago"Growth momentum" isn't a thing, and more over China's growth is slowing. This would be wholly expected under normal circumstances because it's no longer a developing economy, it's a developed economy - the absurd GDP growth rates it had are won off the fact that industrialization is an enormous, enormous change in productivity but you only get to do it once.
- frikskit 1y agoSo industrialization is a binary bit? You just “do” it and it’s over? Not a very convincing take imo. Industrialization, like deindustrialization, is a continuous process. Every industry suffers from depreciation and decay which means that pace of industrialization per unit time matters.
- AngryData 1y agoWhy does China's growth need to be curbed or opposed in any way? What does that accomplish? The only thing we need to be doing is ensuring our own stability, be decently self reliant, and improve the lives of our citizens. It is in inevitable fact that China will eventually surpass us economically, they have far more people, fighting that is just crabs in a bucket fighting over who gets to stand on top of the others.
- ehnto 1y agoThe US has been working with China for decades economically. The rhetoric around them being an enemy is very peculiar, since the US and China have been tightly coupled economic partners for decades now. That said however, the US economy relies quite heavily on the international USD hegemony, and China being a bigger economy does threaten that quite directly. It would be surprising for them to drop the USD, but it is a significant risk.
- buyucu 1y agoWestern Elites can not stomach a non-Western country prospering. It goes against everything they believe in.
- simonh 1y agoJapan? South Korea? Taiwan? Singapore? Saudi and the Gulf States?
- buyucu 1y agoSaudi and Gulf States are run by violent dictators who are Western puppets. Did you forget about MBS 'the Bonesaw' ?
- simonh 1y agoHe did that because he’s a western puppet? The west puts up with them despite such vile behaviour. It’s simply absurd to argue the west can’t tolerate prosperous non western nations when there are many of them we get on with just fine, or despite severe cultural differences. The USA spearheaded integration of China with the international trading system. Their development was an intentional goal.
- whimsicalism 1y agoactually, i think it is okay if other countries become rich and i absolutely reject this foolish zero sum way of thinking.
- ricardobeat 1y ago> tariff them to their death You’re not “tariffing them to death”, you’re hurting yourself. This would only work if the USA was the main importer of goods from China, which it is not - only about 14%.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoChina’s GDP growth is no longer in double digits; it’s in the 4–5% range, and many analysts expect it to fall further due to demographic decline and low productivity growth due to capital investments in infrastructure not needed but politically necessary due to city politics. U.S. per-capita income is roughly $80,000, while China’s is about $13,000. Adjusted for purchasing power it would take decades (at current trajectories, which may be slowing due to EU backlash etc.) to converge. China leads in high-speed rail and EV adoption. These don’t automatically translate into higher overall living standards — healthcare, wages, pensions, and social safety nets matter more. China’s lending practices have also led to accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy,” and some countries are now cautious about overreliance on Chinese help. This is why China negativity amongst all of their immediate neighbors is so high.
- edmundsauto 1y agoDebt trap diplomacy is nicely covered in a fun read called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Was the standard approach from the US for a while during the Cold War
- mensetmanusman 1y agoSuch a strategy applied only in foreign aid and development lending. all programs combined was about 0.3% of GDP. U.S. aid was about Cold War geopolitics, China’s BRI is about long-term economic influence via infrastructure debt.