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by jamesaurichs 994 days ago
Xi is losing it everywhere;

- internal purging of military senior officials. 5 out of the 7 senior officials are now missing in action. https://www.newsweek.com/china-defence-minister-li-shangfu-m.... Very similar to Mao Zedong's purging of his generals https://www.hoover.org/research/lin-biao-incident-and-people.... China has had to transfer generals from airforce and army to head up missile force, because so many generals in the missile forces were purged.

- Xi Jing Ping was privately scalded by party elders during the recent party summit Beidaihe. There's an internal unrest and struggle occurring

- china's export drop 4th straight month https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/business/china-exports-au...

- the great flooding of northeast farmland this summer wiped out 1/3 of China's grain production. in order to mitigate the flooding of Beijing, they instead flooded provinces next to Beijing, which incidentally housed many military forces. Those forces were destroyed without warning.

- another big real estate developer, sunac, filed for bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/economy/china-sunac-ny-bankru....

- the Hangzhou asian games was a massive failure, attended by no major heads from developed countries. Cost $30 billion, while its local governments are so desperate for money, they are raiding temples

- marriages in China in 2022 are down 10% from 2021, lowest record since 1986. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/china/china-marriages-record-...

- Huawei homegrown chips was a nothing burger. iPhones were sold out in seconds online. Full Apple Store crowds. Very empty Huawei stores. People didn't like the overheated mate 60, or the broken software.

In short, political, economic, demographic, and tech collapse in China.

6 comments

Very anecdotal.. But I just spent a couple of weeks in Sichuan for the first time since the pandemic. It felt much more vibrant and wealthy than 5 years ago. People dress better, no more half empty shopping malls, much more vibrant street food scene. I went to some designer fashion mall and they had more trendy brands than I've seen in Seoul or Taipei

Huawei seems to be doing well domestically somehow. Way too many store front that aren't too busy.. But they have their own car brand now that seems to be selling well. I'd say half the cars in the street were some domestic electric car brand. I'd guess gasoline cars will be phased out soon

I kept reading about how devastated the country was by the pandemic - but what I saw was a ton of progress. Talking to locals though, they didn't seem to really percieve the difference :)

Yeah, I’ve seen these stories before. And all from the usual suspects. Quick, someone find the tweet with the 10 Economist magazine covers about China collapsing. You know, the ones that used to come out every 5 years and now come out every year.

Someone could easily cherry pick stories about the US and make the same argument. Unsustainable debt, rampant homelessness and addiction, lifespan and healthspan plummeting, birth rates dropping, etc.

There's an observation in "How Asia Works", by Joe Studwell that all the successful Asian countries grew at about 10% per year as they industrialized, because you can do that by copying the developed world and exporting while paying low wages. Once they caught up, growth dropped to about 5%, because then you have to do something new and pay people more. Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. all followed that path. Countries can screw up and do much worse - Cambodia, North Korea, etc. China is now about at the point where the growth rate drops to 5%. This is not a disaster.
It is a disaster but not for the Chinese. The capitalists elsewhere won't have such cheap labor that's passably educated and has ready access to infrastructure.

Africa and South America would take major investing to bring up to that point.

Can you provide some sources about the flood destroying military forces and Hangzhou government raiding temples?

About Huawei stores being empty, some seems pretty crowded at least on the first day. https://youtu.be/YFeE2xHQVRI?si=2-tqnqXj8aF8srN6

I mean it isn't the first time that narratives about China's collapse have surfaced; they've been going on since the 2000s. Take anything you read about China on western boards with a pinch of salt; vice versa for the other side too.
I know. I live in Hong Kong. Some of these are worrying but a few of them seem questionable. From what I can find, the previous asian games opening also wasn't attended by many world leaders. It's not Olympic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Asian_Games_opening_cer...
It's the first time we've had some serious quantitative data behind it, though.

There are good indicators that an economic stagnation or recession are coming, and that could potentially hurt the CCP long term.

What are you talking about? Data has been collected since they opened up, enough for people to be writing books on it like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China

Now are you going to say the data collected before is unreliable somehow and this time it's reliable?

China had a real estate bubble fueled by overbuilding, and it collapsed. Nobody is quite sure what happens after that. The economic system is so different that the aftereffects aren't clear.
I can't find the paper ATM - but this was discussed by an Australian group (ASPI adjacent) tasked with China watching eight years (? ish ?) ago .. and as I recall it played out more or less as they predicted.

China central planning pushed for and encouraged 'over buiding' for efficiency and surplus, doing bulk deals on concrete, streamlining steel creation from iron ore, etc.

If you put aside the traditional western stock market view of companies trading in the building domain (which grew and collapsed) and look at it as state planning for bulk efficiences of scale it perhaps makes more sense.

Right now it makes sense to look at what the next five to ten year state backed push will be as we might anticipate more "one foot in the free market" bubble like growth there.

Wow, you really should stop using internet. Most of it is absolute bs
Here's a thought, maybe all those news are "fake news"?

The original article talks about China misinformation in Taiwan. Maybe western society is running the same thing to China. Like like they did for North Korea.

Remember the "people can only get certain types of haircuts in North Korea"? Fake news, and I believed it at the time. So now I'm always sceptical on what I read from western news talking about Asian countries.

Here's an interesting satire about this https://youtu.be/2BO83Ig-E8E?si=MziI90I7xP5W4g-m

Western "society" can't do anything because it's not a uniform entity. We're a group of individuals who can post ideas and theories in forums like Hacker News or anywhere else. Perhaps you can say that about mainstream media, having in mind that the average person doesn't care too much about what happens inside China or Asia, unless if it's killing jobs in the West.
Although what you said makes since in principle, there's a lot of people who "fell" for the hair cut "news" and many other ones.
Marriages being down in 2022 is pretty easily explainable as a result of the strict lockdowns that weren't lifted until late December.