This reminds me of when Luo Ji wakes up from hibernation to find that humanity is now 100% capable of securing peace in a daunting future. Sounds amazing!
Super interesting & really helps connect the dots between the status quo of the property market, COVID policies, & the future of consumer/tech. Thanks!
Great Read, but what utopia have Chinese consumers attained? Is this the post-80s boom that US saw after a few years of crushing interest rates... or we still lying flat?
It seems China is taking a pause, in search of its next path, be it another greatness in the making, or be it another 100 years of suffering under the close watch of President Xi. To-date, the fortune of China, under Deng is gradually easing off and in my opinion, a new shape is currently taking place with strong emphasis of the role of state, driving China to either one of the two possibilities here. It is my wish that China can avoid the same greatness mistake of the 1980s economic miracle of Japan then. All greatness of Chinese empires starts with greater humanity and ends with even greater hibernation that could possibly last for few decades at least.
Bravo! A superb summary of a profound and complex subject.
One quibble: "As the Chinese economy suffocated under zero-COVID policies, the broader realisation sank in" is misleading. After three years of Covid, US GDP has grown 3.4%, with 1,000,000 Covid deaths and 3,000,000 Long Covid invalids. China's GDP has grown 13.8%, with 7,000 deaths and 38,000 Long Covids.
One typo: "Firms primarily made do with available semiconductors, abet sacrificing efficiency" should be albeit, and most spell-checkers get that wrong.
Unfortunately, with much more transmissible covid variants endemic in the rest of the world, an aged population rife with lung disease (smoking and air pollution) and diabetes, 100 million unvaccinated and waning immunity among those vaccinated, China faces a public health disaster at least as bad as the US. Lockdowns aren't sustainable, covid isn't survivable but is ultimately unstoppable. We'll see how politics fares...
China is also done with high growth rates, demographics and catchup mean much lower growth, even without covid. Unfortunately large swaths of the imperial hinterland – Yunnan, Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi – remain poor.
1. After three years of Covid, US GDP has grown 3.4%, with 1,000,000 Covid deaths and 3,000,000 Long Covid invalids. China's GDP has grown 13.8%, with 7,000 deaths and 38,000 Long Covids. "Abandoning Zero-COVID means losing more able-bodied workers per day to death and Long-COVID disability then can be replaced by new workers entering the labor pool. From an engineering standpoint, it is inherently unsustainable. The burn-through rate is easily quantifiable, so MTBF is a question of interventions - rescinding labor protections, prison labor, migrant "guest workers" etc, – to try and push back the date of system failure- but eventually, you just run out of people". Naomi Wu.
2. Inland provinces have always been much poorer than their coastal cousins, which accounts for most of China's 38% inequality (what accounts for America's 42% inequality, I wonder?)
3. There are more prisoners, hungry children, drug addicts, poor people, suicides, executions, illiterate, homeless Americans than Chinese.
4. China's infant mortality, 5.4 per thousand births, is lower than America's 5.69 and Chinese children's healthy life expectancy is longer than American kids', and those kids will graduate high school three years ahead of ours.
5. Poverty rates for Americans under 18 rose from 14.4% in 2019 to 16.1% in 2020. For families with a female householder, the poverty rate increased from 22.2 percent to 23.4 percent.
This reminds me of when Luo Ji wakes up from hibernation to find that humanity is now 100% capable of securing peace in a daunting future. Sounds amazing!
Very invigorating!
Always very interesting. Thanks.
Super interesting & really helps connect the dots between the status quo of the property market, COVID policies, & the future of consumer/tech. Thanks!
Great Read, but what utopia have Chinese consumers attained? Is this the post-80s boom that US saw after a few years of crushing interest rates... or we still lying flat?
It seems China is taking a pause, in search of its next path, be it another greatness in the making, or be it another 100 years of suffering under the close watch of President Xi. To-date, the fortune of China, under Deng is gradually easing off and in my opinion, a new shape is currently taking place with strong emphasis of the role of state, driving China to either one of the two possibilities here. It is my wish that China can avoid the same greatness mistake of the 1980s economic miracle of Japan then. All greatness of Chinese empires starts with greater humanity and ends with even greater hibernation that could possibly last for few decades at least.
thanks for your writings! I always learn a lot : helps us see clearly without stereotypes
Great! Any way I can access past premium publications? Happy to pay
Bravo! A superb summary of a profound and complex subject.
One quibble: "As the Chinese economy suffocated under zero-COVID policies, the broader realisation sank in" is misleading. After three years of Covid, US GDP has grown 3.4%, with 1,000,000 Covid deaths and 3,000,000 Long Covid invalids. China's GDP has grown 13.8%, with 7,000 deaths and 38,000 Long Covids.
One typo: "Firms primarily made do with available semiconductors, abet sacrificing efficiency" should be albeit, and most spell-checkers get that wrong.
Unfortunately, with much more transmissible covid variants endemic in the rest of the world, an aged population rife with lung disease (smoking and air pollution) and diabetes, 100 million unvaccinated and waning immunity among those vaccinated, China faces a public health disaster at least as bad as the US. Lockdowns aren't sustainable, covid isn't survivable but is ultimately unstoppable. We'll see how politics fares...
China is also done with high growth rates, demographics and catchup mean much lower growth, even without covid. Unfortunately large swaths of the imperial hinterland – Yunnan, Xinjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi – remain poor.
Let's clear up some popular misconceptions:
1. After three years of Covid, US GDP has grown 3.4%, with 1,000,000 Covid deaths and 3,000,000 Long Covid invalids. China's GDP has grown 13.8%, with 7,000 deaths and 38,000 Long Covids. "Abandoning Zero-COVID means losing more able-bodied workers per day to death and Long-COVID disability then can be replaced by new workers entering the labor pool. From an engineering standpoint, it is inherently unsustainable. The burn-through rate is easily quantifiable, so MTBF is a question of interventions - rescinding labor protections, prison labor, migrant "guest workers" etc, – to try and push back the date of system failure- but eventually, you just run out of people". Naomi Wu.
2. Inland provinces have always been much poorer than their coastal cousins, which accounts for most of China's 38% inequality (what accounts for America's 42% inequality, I wonder?)
3. There are more prisoners, hungry children, drug addicts, poor people, suicides, executions, illiterate, homeless Americans than Chinese.
4. China's infant mortality, 5.4 per thousand births, is lower than America's 5.69 and Chinese children's healthy life expectancy is longer than American kids', and those kids will graduate high school three years ahead of ours.
5. Poverty rates for Americans under 18 rose from 14.4% in 2019 to 16.1% in 2020. For families with a female householder, the poverty rate increased from 22.2 percent to 23.4 percent.
Glad to have you back!