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this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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I think he came off as a bit of a jerk. And I think he isn't giving Xi quite enough credit. But they aren't wrong, and they aren't defending Xi. Xi like trump is a culmination of a toxic culture of concentrated power and ignorance.
Tiananmen square happened in 89. Long before Xi came to power. China has practiced oppression on it's own people for decades. Much like every country that took their cues from leninism. Many Chinese tolerated it because despite their leadership things were improving at large. Much like how Americans generally ignore the plight of the poor, minorities, and immigrants. As long as they have their bread and circuses.
Problem is China has been projecting their oppression for some time now under Xi and saber rattling like western powers often get a pass on. But decades of bad decisions are coming home to roost. And their growth is finally slowing. That's more responsible for changes in attitude than anything Xi in particular has done.
On the Chinese political scale, Xi would be seen as right-moderate. His rhetoric is in line with a good chunk of Chinese citizens, but ostracizes Shanghai and some of the southeastern coastal elite.
Famously, Xi Jinping said "houses should be for living, not for speculation."
The notion that China's growth is slowing is true, but I think it lacks context. For the past decade or so, Chinese economic growth has been buoyed by a burgeoning construction sector. With changes to economic policy a few years back, that sector is seeing contraction and regressing back to replacement rate. Real estate shrank from nearly 30% of GDP to less than 20%. Yet, China is still reporting GDP growth in excess of 5% this year. Eventually the real estate industry will plateau, but nobody really knows where or when.
And in that he's 100% right. And you're also correct about the context. Belt an road is a post rebranding of wasteful infrastructure spending to prop up the countries economics. Not that governments shouldn't spend on infrastructure. But the way China has been doing it has been a method to prop up a very unstable house of cards. Literally just throwing around money all over the place with very little return. In the end, just making things worse really.
IIRC China denominates their loans in USD because they have a massive USD surplus due to the US-China trade imbalance. It's aligned with China's policy today of rapidly shrinking US Treasury holdings.
Which is only going to cause them more problems long run. In a state capitalist society, or any other capitalist society for that matter. Worthless debt is worthless. Capitalism is unsustainable. But if it was sustainable it would require healthy trading partners. So they're really shooting themselves in the foot on that front. And none of the giant fancy ghost stations or high speed rail lines built out to the rural parts of China. The party has largely ignored and failed to benefit for most it's existence is going to change that. Especially with the population disparity.
If they were truly socialist/communist, at this point they'd be pretty secure. Instead of slowly heading for an inevitable crash. It isn't just them though. The west is getting ready to crash again soon. And we can't be bothered to mitigate it.
I mean, isn't there pretty substantial evidence that those "ghost cities" are just speculative development that, most of the time, is productive?
See: https://youtu.be/SR4EYQ6JFUI?si=brfvaXCezqVI0hiL
The party's approach to dealing with the marginalized rural population is to just urbanize as many people as possible. That's also why they speculatively build out housing. In 2023, at least, rural people are getting more disposable income growth than urban ones:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/SR4EYQ6JFUI?si=brfvaXCezqVI0hiL
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I wasn't talking about the cities per se. But their overspending on high speed rail etc. In terms of housing. There is no one size fits all. And urbanization is not acceptable for everyone. There will always be people who reject it and they aren't necessarily wrong for doing so. You have to build infrastructure where people are. And the infrastructure they need. Not just where you want them to be or think they need. So in that sense they may have housing for everyone. But they are still occupied by ghosts seeing it's not the housing they need or want. But one size fits all thinking, along with social oppression and a healthy dash of torturing and murdering those that disagree. Have always been core problems of leninism and those inspired by it. So it was always going to be the sort of mistakes the party makes. Because they don't, and have no need or incentive to actually serve the people.
I mean, objectively Chinese HSR is cheaper per unit distance than California's or London's by... I think an order of magnitude? They can afford to build additional infrastructure at scale.
China connected basically all major Chinese cities for less than 10x the cost of California HSR or HS2.
I'm not decrying investment in infrastructure. But rather the types and ways China has done it, specifically with propping up their faltering economy in mind.
I'd also love to see nationwide build out of quality desirable public housing in the US. To put landlords out of business and bring housing costs back to reality. But it would be silly to build it all in Wyoming where most people don't want to live. Or as Brutalist architecture which most people don't enjoy.
High speed rail and public transportation too. But building high speed rail to villages that don't need or want it. Just to prop up the economy. Is again wasteful, not actually serving their needs, and only going to make their problems bigger in the end. The party is serving the party and not the people.
I mean, I think it's just a completely different development model.
China develops for future demand, while the US develops for past demand.
Invariably, developing for future demand sometimes leads to poor development, but those cases are not the norm. What it does allow is taking advantage of economies of scale to improve net efficiency (again, in the HSR example, China incurred 10x the debt to build 50x the rail of California and 150x the rail of the UK). Even if half of your buildup is useless, it's still more efficient than the American approach.
I'm sure there's some optimal point in the middle and I don't think China's hit that, but I think you're conflating different issues to justify the lack of infrastructure investment in the US. The thing is, with the massive rural-urban migration in China, it was always better to have excess capacity than insufficient capacity: the urban population is the key driver to economic growth.
For what it's worth, you can ask people in SF if they'd prefer to live in brutalist buildings for $500/month or pay the exorbitant rents in the area...