[marianatom]

China's PPP should reduce in half this year. It has seen massive layoffs from every industry (average 22% decline in revenue across all industries). It has seen 50% reduction in wages, even in stable positions like government offices. It has seen unpaid wages for anywhere from a few months up to a year!!

This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline

China’s Latest Source of Unrest: Unpaid ‘Zero Covid’ Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/world/asia/china-covid-pr...

China's Industrial profits in the January-March period declined 21.4% from a year earlier https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-27/china-s-i...

[dang]

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36453518 and stop posting like this. We don't want flamewars, especially not fueled by pre-existing agendas.

(and no, we're not secret communists or whatever - we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck in predictable ways)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36451477.

[alephnerd]

Huh? Even the most bearish projections about Chinese economic growth are at about 3% per year. For PPP to actually halve you'd have to actually see a recession comparable to the Great Depression, the Peso Crisis in the 90s, or the 2015 EU+US sanctions in Russia.

[marianatom]

China IS in a Great Depression. The government is making the numbers seem a little bit better, but with 21% official youth unemployment rate - definitely higher since netizens have found that only 20% of this year's graduate has secured jobs, and 50% - 70% reduction in real estate listing prices, when real estate is 30% of China's economy and how local governments mostly gets funded, we will see retroactively that China entered its Great Depression in 2022.

[alephnerd]

Chinese youth unemployment in 2023 is roughly comparable to the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) in the 2010s. Those countries still held around a 2-3% GDP growth rate.

Also, the bearish 2-3% growth rate estimation was derived independently of the PRC government - it was reached by both Blackstone and the IMF.

None of this is to say there isn't an economic malaise/recession in the PRC circa 2023, but honestly it's playing out the same way a similar growth slowdown happened in Mexico, Türkiye, South Korea, Thailand, and Brazil in the 2000s when those countries hit similar economic metrics to China in the early 2020s.

[marianatom]

1.) China's unemployment rate is no where near comparable to europe's. China considers one employed if one has worked at least ONE hour a week. or if their family have land to farm.

2.) There's nothing comparable to what's happening to China right now, except for the Russia sanctions, where an entire economic engine (export, 25% of GDP) is being ripped out or shut down, by companies pulling factories out of China

3.) Blackstone and IMF have been plenty wrong before. also, there's no chance they don't at least use some part of the data from the Chinese's National office of statistics.

[alephnerd]

Tbh, this is a weird hill for you to die on.

The PRC is absolutely in a recession. No one is arguing against that, but to say a recession will lead to a 50% collapse in GDP is absolutely ludicrous.

The only middle income countries that have seen such a dramatic collapse in GDP are those in an active state of war like Ukraine, Syria, or Lebanon.

[quad_eye_oh]

Property values are something like 70% of China's wealth, but only 30% of production. A GDP drop of 15% is very conceivable.

I think it's likely GP is wrong about the 50% figure, but if they were correct the CCP would never publish the number for fear of scaring away foreign investment. So it may be worth looking into more deeply.

[goodbyesf]

> China IS in a Great Depression.

You can't have either the US or China in a great depression without it taking everyone down with them. If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world. If china is in a great depression, apple stock would have cratered as would most indices around the world. Go read about the 1929 stock crash. Money front runs economic depressions. Meaning wall street will let us know.

The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang. China was supposed to collapse decades ago according to the anti-china "experts". Today it's the like of peter zeihan and youtube grifters like serpentza, et al. Same old nonsense - economic collapse, falun gong genocide, organ harvesting, environmental devastation, end of "da ccp". All of that turned out to be outright lies in the 2000s.

My advice is stop watching silly youtube videos by silly grifters and silly news from silly media organizations. Watch the money. If one day, the dow or s&p drops 10% ( even with circuit breakers ), then we may have something. If it continues to drop and stay down, then we may have something. Can't believe the amount of nonsense people believe when it comes to china. Especially when it's the same old debunked nonsense.

At this point I don't know whether people like gordon chang or peter zeihan work for "da USA" or "da CCP". Cause their outlandish bullshit always end up being wrong and making china look good in the end.

[alephnerd]

> organ harvesting, environmental devasation

Just because one person spouts disinformation doesn't mean all criticism is false. [0][1][2]

[0] - https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/06/china-un-hum...

[1] - https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...

[2] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

[goodbyesf]

Do I seem like a person who has or hasn't dealt with people who spam a list of links before? Also it's not that one person did, it's that all of them did. It was state backed propaganda.

The organ "harvesting" is something that happened in chinese dominant countries. Even in taiwan, which strangely enough didn't get the same "press" coverage. But I'm guessing you already knew that.

Whatever happened to the "death camps" in china with millions of muslims? Did that turn out to be fake as well? We had satelite images and graphic testimony and congress even pass a bill declaring it a genocide. And then magically radio silence. That's exactly what happened back then too.

But then again, we send warships along the chinese coast and accuse them of threatening us.

[marianatom]

> If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world

And how did you arrive at this conclusion? US seems fine right now with record low unemployment, strong dollar, and increased factory activities. While detachment from China is already in progress, with China's export slumped 7.5% in May, which is atrocious since that number is compared from a year ago when China was in lockdown. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/chinas-exports-plunge-by-7po.... Fact is, the world is moving away from China, and it seems to be doing ok, but China is suffering from double digit decline in real estate/export/retail.

> The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang

Yes, discount everything logical because of one pundit who is too early. Nevermind most of the business leaders this year have mentioned moving business/factories out of China as a long term plan.

> Watch the money

No, watch all the multinationals pull factories out of China. watch the increasing panic from normal Chinese citizen online video with respect to foreclosure/job loss/unemployment. then watch the money.

[dang]

It looks like your account has been using HN primarily (exclusively?) for nationalistic/political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so I need to ask you to stop doing this.

It's fine to occasionally post on divisive or political topics as part of a general mix, but we ban accounts when they are primarily used for that, and single-purpose accounts are definitely not ok here. We want curious conversation, which is pretty much the opposite of these things.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html