China's one child policy is beginning to bite them in the rear. More people are dying than being born. That means fewer people to support the elderly and go to work every day. China doesn't have a reputation for innovation but necessity is the mother of invention and they'll probably figure it out. Alibaba and Baidu seem to be doing well without Western influence. If they find a need to automate as a result of their declining population, coupled with their lower wages...bad combination for the rest of the world. I wouldn't worry about pollution. It's the worst in the world, but that could change quickly. China still has a dictator and when the NPC decides to implement something it happens pretty quick, unlike the U.S. where we have lawsuits and special interest groups to derail progress. Besides, it doesn't seem to worry the Chinese. They make a lot of crappy stuff. But so did Japan and South Korea many years ago. If they ever institute the levels of professionalism that exists in Germany, South Korea and Japan.....watch out. And they have the largest middle class in the world. And it is getting larger. They see movies and tv shows from the West and they want everything we have. I think that their domestic consumption will increase at faster rate with each additional year. And it will become more important for growth than their export market. China has a lot of financial reserves and they are acquiring oil and natural gas fields as fast as they can rob them from their neighbors. And from what I have gathered, the Chinese are currently proud to be Chinese and patriotic. To me, that suggests that they will agree with the decisions made by the NPC. In other words, there wont' be any more public protests or Tienanmen Square events. China has been acquiring large quantities of gold for the last several years. They want to institute a gold backed currency to compete against the dollar which is backed by nothing other than aircraft carriers. With 1/4 of the world's population and a large gold (and silver etc...) reserve they could eventually displace NYC, London and Frankfurt as a leading financial center. Fresh Water is in short supply in China and they recently diverted a river that flowed into India which pissed off India. There are also some contested areas between India and China and India moved some troops to Northern India along their border this week as a reaction to China. There is also China's expansion in the China Sea, relying on a ridiculous 9 dash map line that is 500 years old. And they seem to be building up their military as fast as they can steal the technology from the West. And while China expands in Asia, Russia is expanding in Europe. I don't want to be pessimistic or sound like an End Times Fatalist, but it does seem like we are there. If you have ever read any psychic predictions about the future it seems that many of them are coming true or at least seem reasonable. I know some (most) psychics are frauds, but when you read predictions from people that lived 100, 300, 500 years ago and they all said the same thing......it makes you go hmmm... But...China is not going away. I don't want to seem unpatriotic, but the 20th century belonged to America. And I think the 21st will belong to China.
Is that why South East Asia economies are massively dominated by chinese ethnic led entreprises, why Han represent a disproportionate share of business owners there ? Even in Europe where one find a large amount of chinese workers, they will usuallt find very succesful chinese bosses. I doubt it s very different in the US, in Western countries chinese so far seem to fimd bigger political and cultural challenges to mow down the business landscape but i wouldn t bet this will last forever. Pollution is a huge issue though in the.mainland, not sure if they will be able to.deal with it in a satisfactory way. I do have a.chinese.smartphone wich shows.levels of pollution less than half than what they appear on less complacent devices but i suspect the authorities need to come up with better solutionns.
yeah, the pollutioni an awful result of chinese economy, also they have huge troubles with the fresh water.
Agree with most everything you wrote, except for the end-times fatalism. People who bet against humanity and its long-term march of progress have, historically speaking, a terrible track-record. As the man said, "Never invest for The Apocalypse; It only happens once, and you can't collect."
• China’s Growth Sucks In More Debt Bucks For Less Bang (R.) As China’s economy notches up another quarter of steady growth, the pace of credit creation grows ever more frantic for every extra unit of production, as inefficient state firms swallow an increasing share of lending. The world’s second-largest economy grew 6.7% in the first half of the year, unchanged from the first quarter, testament to policymakers’ determination to regulate the pace of slowdown after 25 years of breakneck expansion. Analysts say that determination has come at the cost of a damngerous rise in debt, which is six times less effective at generating growth than a few years ago. “The amount of debt that China has taken in the last 5-7 years is unprecedented,” said Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets, Ruchir Sharma, at a book launch in Singapore. “No developing country in history has taken on as much debt as China has taken on on a marginal basis.” While Beijing can take comfort that loose money and more deficit spending are averting a more painful slowdown, the rapidly diminishing returns from such stimulus policies, coupled with rising defaults and non-performing loans, are creating what Sharma calls “fertile (ground) for some accident to happen”. From 2003 to 2008, when annual growth averaged more than 11%, it took just one yuan of extra credit to generate one yuan of GDP growth, according to Morgan Stanley calculations. It took two for one from 2009-2010, when Beijing embarked on a massive stimulus program to ward off the effects of the global financial crisis. The ratio had doubled again to four for one in 2015, and this year it has taken six yuan for every yuan of growth, Morgan Stanley said, twice even the level in the United States during the debt-fueled housing bubble that triggered the global crisis. Total bond debt in China is up over 50% in the past 18 months to 57 trillion yuan ($8.5 trillion), equal to around 80% of GDP, and new total social financing, the widest measure of credit provided by China’s central bank, rose 10.9% in the first half of 2016 to 9.75 trillion yuan. China’s money supply has increased in tandem with new lending, and at 149 trillion yuan is now 73% higher than in the US, an economy about 60% larger. “China is the largest money printer in the world – they have been for some time. The balance is really extreme,” says Kevin Smith, CEO of U.S.-based Crescat Capital. Read more …
Just curious, but what about India's future, since it seems to be worse off pollution-wise? Also, huge & growing population eating away at scarce resources. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...at-it-kills-half-a-million-people-every-year/