[CathayRe]

>In 2012, I traveled for about 6 weeks in China. ........None of this made any sense

It really doesn't. That is until you visit there again in 3 - 5 years times. Everything is different. You start getting lots more people and spending money. Ok it is not like everyone becomes wealthy overnight. But from Zero to having a few people actually buying, shopping and eating in these malls is quite an achievement. And they move from bottom class Third Tier cities into upper class Third Tier etc...

I have seen it, it is a little hard to comprehend. I still don't know how everything was possible.

[setgree]

When I saw the section of my comment you quoted, I thought you were going a different direction, which is pointing out that my original comment reads like a satire of HN commentary: "I dabbled in something as an amateur for like a month and now I don't believe any experts because I'm so much smarter.."

Anyway, I'm perfectly happy to be wrong here, there's clearly a lot about macroeconomics that I don't know (that people don't know?). So, if you say that it's happening despite its weirdness, well, that's something.

I just think we have a big enough theoretical apparatus for why state-directed economic development is inefficient that the burden of proof is on people saying "things are going well in China." Especially because we can be pretty confident that some large percent of the statistics we see on development are forged.