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jamesaurichs

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jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
Yeah, I'm sorry to break a nationalist's heart. China needs foreign investment to survive, otherwise its 22% youth unemployment rate, 3 of its biggest real estate companies being bankrupt, local government's $12 trillion debt, 600M citizens on $140/month income will just get worse.

But those investments are now gone forever.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
[dead]
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
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.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
[flagged]
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
There's going to be a lot of Russian and Chinese interference in American politics in 2024 for sure
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
[flagged]
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
silver lake is a private equity firm, pretty famous on hacker news
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
I would beg to differ. A lot of game developers watch gaming streams. There's a reason why cohhcarnage was asked to voice in cyberpunk and baldur's gate 3, and why blizzard personnels will respond to asmongold directly
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
They have greatly damaged their users and their indirect users' trust. When big time streamers like cohhcarnage and asmongold directly replies to unity and tell them how much they have messed up https://twitter.com/CohhCarnage/status/1703577526809845760 https://twitter.com/Asmongold/status/1703636396718555428, you know you've done fucked up
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
the stock is doomed, check out asmongold's video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNXQ2bYik78. more importantly, insiders have been selling a ton, for example the founder of iron source. Silver lake sold all of theirs direct stocks for example.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
Note that this OP probably has some agenda against dollar, being that in another comment before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37046128#37047171 they said

"Yeah, for example China's position of overwhelming strength vs. weak little USoA meant that China's wages have risen by an order of magnitude and their technology catapulted into the present century, building them in to the world's largest economy."

Just a subtle subterfuge against dollar if I had to guess
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
[flagged]
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
"Chinese factories haven't slowed down and Chinese GDP is still rising"

This line is so wrong. You can't have 22% (at least) youth unemployment rate, and 19th straight month collapsing land sales revenue https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-landsales/chin... (which is how local government get most of its money), and your biggest and second biggest real estate developer going bankrupt, and still support a 5% GDP growth as mentioned by the Chinese government. just doesn't happen in a real world.

And there are so many reports of factories closing down, especially in the Shenzhen and Dongguan districts, either online videos or news reports https://thediplomat.com/2023/04/dongguans-industrial-woes-ch..., that I don't know why you're attempting to lie outright.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
1.) "The demand side is mostly people buying second and third units as investments." that is incorrect. Most purchases are first purchases from couples that want to get married, and a home purchase is a required dowry from men that they need in order to get approved for marriage from the parents.

There are famous online videos from newlyweds that purchased a condo from a few years ago, and have been documenting their journey, and they still haven't received the unit. Meanwhile their kid was born already.

2.) Yes, just google "empty kindegardens in China". Also, marriages dropped to the lowest since records began in 1986. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/14/marriages-in-c...

3.) Nope. China’s government land sales revenue declined for the 19th consecutive month in July. Land sales fell 10.1% from a year earlier in July, after declining 24.3% the previous month https://www.reuters.com/article/china-economy-landsales/chin...

The Chinese local governments' bonds alone total at about $2 trillion, and any defaults would rock the Asian nation's $60 trillion financial system, according to Bloomberg. https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/chinas-10-t...
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
There are a number, and I mean a large number of issues. I'll just pick a few

1.) as of 2021, There are nearly 800 unfinished Evergrande projects in more than 200 cities across China. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/business/china-evergrande.... Even if the buildings were unfinished, the buyer still had to keep paying the mortgage!! and if they didn't, and the courts foreclosed the property and sold it, the buyer is liable for the fees and the differences. Most of the time the buyer is hugely underwater since the real estate price in 2023 has crashed 50% - 70% from peak. And now, because your social credit is shot, you no longer can purchase tickets for flight or train, making it even harder to try to find jobs to pay back your debt.

2.) China is known for its tofu dreg buildings. Just google online if you want to see brand new condos with facades blown off, cracked foundation, sand mixture where cement should be, tilted buildings, etc. This is especially true with buildings built in the last few years. And this is especially true for buildings from bankrupt mega developers like evergrande and country garden.

3.) This is a domino that leads to a series of systemic collapse. Country garden, the second largest developer in China, missed bond payments as small as 22 million recently. It had a capitalization of 60B in 2018. Now it has a debt of 200B. Zhongzhi enterprise missed payments recently, being one of the largest trust company. People are reminded of Lehman from these events. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-beijing-lehman.... Doesn't help that export and import just collapsed by double digits in July, exports to US dropped 23% y/y, there's huge youth unemployment of at least 22%, foreign investment dropped 90% in 2023, and the worst flood in the last 50 years just hit China's biggest grain region.

Oh yeah, and because Chinese citizens are outraged by Fukushima release, they are boycotting Japanese seafood, and in general all seafood, which has decimated the entire seafood industry in China overnight, with no traffic to seafood market or restaurants.

4.) Even if the buildings were done, a lot of the buildings are empty and not livable due to shoddy finish, foreclosures, no public amenities working, lack of residents (owners are selling the units at 50% price cuts), etc. Imagine living in a huge 50 story building with only a few residents at night. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/see-inside-a-ghost...
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/beijing-replaces-english-words-sub...

The English word “station” was replaced with “Zhan,” which is the pinyin or romanised version of the Chinese character.

In some places, station names such as Olympic Park and Terminal 2 of the Beijing airport were changed to “Aolinpike Gongyuan” and “2 Hao Hangzhanlou”.

https://www.economist.com/china/2022/04/13/why-china-is-turn...

Why China is turning away from English
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
If there are any business to do in China in the next 10-20 years. Foreign investment in China is down 90% this year. Again, international travel in China is down 97% this year. Apparently everyone else except hacker news readers are aware of the shift.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
English IS the global lingua franca TODAY, used by most travelers to navigate through an unknown environment. if the signs in China are not translated into English TODAY, then there's no reason to go there TODAY.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
Here are some conjectures:

1.) There is a very high dislike of China across the world.

Large majorities in most of the 19 countries surveyed have negative views of China https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views...

2.) No business need to travel there. Foreign investment is down 90% this year. Literally no US/europe presence in the trade fairs in China the summer.

3.) Flights are super expensive, because of low demand, upwards of $5k-10k. travel out of China is down hugely due to the economy, you can search on youTube for videos from Shanghai airport where the airport is devoid of travelers, and filled with empty shops.

4.) It is very hard for travelers to navigate through China. No English translations in street signs. One needs Alipay to pay for anything in China, which is complicated to setup. Ethnocentrism from rising nationalism means there could be racism/violence against travelers.
jamesaurichs
·3 yıl önce·discuss
There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons

In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada.

In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most people speaks English.

In Malaysia people usually speak at least 4 languages. Because it was ruled by Britain before, people speak English fairly well.

Lastly, in China, well, nobody is traveling there now. International travel is down 97% this year, even after reopening. And if you're doing business there, well, there's no point understanding the contract in Mandarin because most likely it won't be enforced, and will favor local business anyways by the courts. What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. So even if your read the English part of the sign you cannot understand it.