I think that they are stronger than some people perceive. So you have this 5k USD per capital GDP but we are talking about a strict economy with BILLIONS of people that doesn’t measure the black market (no country really does but we account for it kind of. China’s black market is HUGE) think of all the MILLIONS of peasants in the western part of the country. They don’t have an accurate census or count the value (it may not be in money, a lot of bartering in the countryside) of the time people spend doing things. Their actual GDP I suspect would be a bit higher on par with at least 2nd world standards. 3rd if you still include the smog near big cities.
I guess the question really becomes how many people are too many. It becomes a slippery slope from there. At least what we do with all these people and growth rates.
We are a larger country than China by area http://www.mongabay.com/igapo/world_statistics_by_area.htm so we could fit 1.3 billion people but then 70% unemployment would be good unless we paid people and average 12,000 or so dollar salary.
Fell free to correct me if my figures are wrong. No quotes unless I provided one but the concept stays the same.
I am in India right now, and I just got back from China. The people who get away with it in China are rumored to be the ruling elite and other related as the previous poster said. But, it isn’t talked about much because people are generally suspicious.
In India, it’s all blamed on the politicians. I’m sure wealthy elites and friends of politicians also have a hand, but by and large the politicians have the lions share of being able to get away with it.
We are building out in the boonies to take advantage of cheap labor in China. They are largely subsistence farmers, barely making enough for their own needs. Even if GDP did account for what they actually produced, it would give a trivial bump to overall GDP production.
I recall in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, Judge Fang works for something called the “Chinese Coastal Republic.” (But this is in a near-future where all the old nation-states have fallen apart – the new thing is the tribe.)
If there is an economic collapse of any sort, there seems to me to be one possible significant difference between China and many other countries.
The Chinese government runs the economy. They appear to me to operate on the premise that “they know what they are doing and know whats best for the masses” and maybe even tell? the masses that.
Well, if/when things go south, the powers that be are going to be hard pressed to escape blame.
Yeah, people in other countries blame the powers that be when things get bad too. But I think in China it might rise to a whole nuther level of blame. Especially if China’s gotten the peasants all excited about getting out of poverty, sorta getting there, then faultering or backsliding. That might piss off the peasants more than if they had just stayed poor. And the fact that a fair number of Chinese got damn rich in the game before the peasants got screwed yet again aint going to help matters either.
Note, I am not a worker at some famous politcal/economic think tank 
Another difference that nobody much talks about is that in China rebellions are traditional. Plenty of rebellions in Chinese history, many of them successful (even more of them disastrous). When a ruling dynasty grows corrupt, it loses the Mandate of Heaven and rebellion becomes legitimate. Big natural disasters can be taken as a sign that the dynasty has lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Once again, I have no idea whether any Chinese, after all these decades under Communism, still think like that.
As the old joke (and story of the end of the Qin Dynasty) goes, “What’s the penalty for being late for work?” “Death.” “What’s the penalty for trying to overthrow the Emperor?” “Death.” “Well, I got news for you. We’re late.”
Having lived in Taiwan for 3 years in the 1980’s, I travel there for work a few days per month, and lived in China for about 20 years and my wife is Shanghaiese. Hmmm.
Big difference is that China had a long civil war, the revolution, destroyed the intelligensa, Great Leap Forward (backward really), the Cultural Revolution, and then the unparalled opening to the world and economic rise. You can’t live through all of that without it changing society. And you have over a billion people competing for scare resources or their piece of the pie. And yes, much of the culture has been dumbed down to educate the masses. Family and clan ties are still very strong - with all that went on for the past century the only ones you can rely on are the family.
The people in Taiwan had a different mix of being a Japanese colony, the KMT invasion, destruction of their own intelligensa (2-28 Incident), military dictatorship for decades, but a rising GDP from the 1960’s with a highly internationally educated workforce. There is more of a traditional Chinese education but I’m hard pressed to call Taiwan all that cultural. It’s too small without a critical mass for that.
That’s just off the cuff and I have to get back to work.
One other poster highlighted that it’s a government controlled economy. That’s not really true. Less than 20% of the economy is the old school command and control.
Does Confucianism still exist or matter, anywhere but SK and Japan?
What about Taoism?
And, just out of curiosity, is there anyone in China or Taiwan or anywhere in Asia or the world who seriously wants to bring back the Old China, with all its old family-is-everything ways, and an Emperor and a bureaucracy chosen for knowledge of the Confucian classics?
(Thinking of The Diamond Age again – Judge Fang was a kind of neo-Confucian official – modeled on Judge Dee – in the Coastal Republic.)
In my opinion, Confucian principles are still alive and well, although a lot of the pomp ceremony has fallen out of favor. Filial piety, the “responsibility system” and the importance of hierarchy is still very relevant.
While there are plenty of people who appreciate “old China,” with it’s classical poetry, civility and glory, they are kind of like medieval enthusiasts here- it’s kind of neat and some may get carried away, but in the end I think most everyone appreciates coming home to flush toilets and network TV.
That said, Chinese nationalism is a strong force and plenty would like to expand China’s sphere of influence and rule to it’s old boundaries.
There are vestiges of confucianism in China and the diaspora. After living in Japan for 3 years, I’m not sure Japan has much more than a vestige as well. I think what Even Sven is alluding to is the vestige of Confucianism. Christ, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone even use the word since Madame Chiang Kai-shek died.
An analogy that might fit is think agnostics in a country like the US. An amount of the Christian ethic is in the US society, but I wouldn’t characterize the US as a Christian country. Confucianism in China and frankly in my experience in Asia is less than Christianity as a whole in the US society. Again, just a weak analogy.
Taoism basically doesn’t exist if it ever really did. There are some Taoist mountains and retreat centers, but again it’s more a small part of the Chinese cultural mosaic rather than something you can really pinpoint.
That wouldnt surprise me. But I think the point I raised still brings up a interesting question. Do the Chinese citizens feel the government is “in charge” of the economy? And if it all goes south (maybe even not terribly bad) will the citizens get more mad or blame the government more strongly than would your typical citizen in many other western/democratic/first world countries?
I have the impression that that is the case but I doubt I have any real experience to back that up. What do you Chinese experts think?
so what’s the problem again here? Why should poor Chinese workers care about the loss of money invested by rich but not-so-wise Chinese capitalists and government officials into building houses to nowhere?
The typical worker does not care about other people wasting their money. What he cares about is “do I get a sufficient wage to feed my family and keep a roof over their heads”. Once you meet this basic human need for the majority of your citizens, you can waste the remaining money on property bubbles, buying American bonds, building a Pacific fleet and whatever else it is that the Chinese government is doing nowadays.
Incidentally, the keeping a roof over your head part is a lot cheaper over there than in America because housing standards are lower, more people can live per room and so rent expenditure per person is lower. The whole “homelessness” bit that our Western commies keep on bringing out as the great sin of the modern capitalism is in reality a purely socialist, “progressive” induced phenomenon. Before there were the progressives, we had the Flophouse - Wikipedia . Then the commies demolished, zoned out, regulated away and otherwise destroyed all the flophouses and so a million people ended up sleeping on the street, in their cars and God knows where. Well, quoth my favorite demotivator Government - Despair, Inc. : “Government - if you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions”.
The problem is if the property bubble is in line with the US, it will cause a recession or a global recession that will affect the average Chinese. Poor people could care less if rich people lose money on investments, unless it affects them.
Why? I mean, companies left the US because the cost of wages grew too large. China was the obvious place to go for cheap labor. Why would companies move back to the states? They’ll move to other Asian countries, or maybe over to Africa. There’s no reason that American companies who moved manufacturing to China will move back if China implodes.
It’s always a business case. A lot of companies are not capturing the savings they projected when they shifted to China. By the time you calculate in rising wages, actual costs, shipping times, supply chain disruptions, etc. Look at the Japan example, the supply chain interruption is going to start costing some industries like automotive and high tech money. And this can be because a 50 cent part is not available.
Use an even more simple example, calls centers to India were all the rage. Now, depending on the case, it can be more effective to put that call center in Texas or N Dakota. Same with manufacturing.