China land of the rising sun, but also the land of the “middle”, the “balance”
zhōng (中) middle or center, guó (国 or 國) empire or country
“This name is the translation of the Chinese name for the country: 中国 (in the Pinyin transliteration “Zhongguo”).
China’s economy explained in one sentence:
China’s economy basically went through all stages of western industrial economies (boom and crash) but with 10x times the speed. (from boom to bust in 10 years instead of 100 years)
It was the US economic model called “Chicago School Of globalized reckless libertarian capitalistic economics” (maximize profits no matter what) that gave rise to China’s economy and it’s double digit GDP growth rates, long time not seen in the Western hemispheres.
What does the Chinese President Xi Jinping (The good king?) want?
(except to stay in power as long as possible)
First of all, is he a good king? History will tell.
Xi just as Putin (of course) wants to stay in power as long as possible. (power addicts, that derive their feeling of importance by being president)
Xi wants to continue the path of economic growth and prosperity for China, to avoid what every president fears the most: uprising of the people, that feel betrayed by the “Chinese dream” of working hard and gaining living standards (a house with warm water and electricity , a car, a fridge, more or less free internet (the censorship in China is (still) easily circumvent).
In this sense the “Chinese dream” is no different than the American dream, but HOPES ARE HIGH that Chinese leaders (unlike Western state leaders) actually STILL feel responsible for their citizens and are not willing to sacrifice everything for profits.
AND: that it is kept true (except for Tibet) that China usually does not try to gain by “stupid” direct military conflict but by (sometimes ruthless) economics.
The sky has a limits – capitalism “thinks” it has no limits (but it has)
The sky ends at 100km or 62 miles (“Kármán line”) beyond that starts the cold dark blackness of outer space.
So the sky clearly has limits. But the human made system of capitalism thinks it has no limits. and continues borrowing. continous building.
In this sense someone believing that capitalism has no natural limits whatsoever is actually a mentally ill person. This illnes was caused by too much untaxed money on offshore accounts and driving a Ferrari down the road in Monaco, feeling like the bankster, feeling like “god”.
God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Banks said “Let there be money” and there was money.
Evergrande: China’s 2008?
Almost everyone was affected by the until today worst economic crisis caused by the finance sector, and it is not over yet, because politicians were too shy to reform.
2008 exposed the capitalistic banking system to what it is: fraudulent monopoly taking hostage whole nations.
The “Subprime mortgage crisis” “Financial Crisis” was banks in “unlimited capitalistic god mode” lending without limits betting on house prices without limits (?) reckless and unchecked.
“building on top of debt is coming to an end”
One of the largest real estate construction companies China’s Evergrande went practically bankcrupt-defaulted in end 2021.
“The model of building on more and more debt is over” (Youtube)
“the Chinese economy is developing into something new that we don’t understand yet” (Youtube)
Both – the Chinese and the American dream base on an unsustainable system of growth by capitalism which means – growth by more and more debt – which lead to the most absurd non-sense situations of companies like Evergrande to just continue build houses – no matter what – no matter if those houses are needed or not – solely out of speculation – that ever rising house prices will fix everything. (sounds like USA / The West 2008 right?)
Now that debt fueled nightmare has come to China’s capitalistic experiment: the real estate developer Evergrand has piled up $300 Billion in debt and the Chinese government does not intend to bail out the company or the people that invested in it
Some Western professional “gamblers” and banks, some Chinese citizens who lost all their savings.
“China Evergrande, which has the dubious distinction of being the world’s most indebted real estate developer, is gripped by a solvency crisis that began more than a year ago.”
“And the crisis affects not just Evergrande.”
“A growing number of Chinese property developers are facing financial strain, while property sales and home prices in China are falling sharply.”
“The Chinese government, worried that an engine of growth is losing steam, is struggling to keep the property sector afloat.”
“Yet China’s rescue measures are mostly short-term solutions to a larger long-term problem.”
“In fact, Evergrande is a leading indication that China’s model of property-led growth is unsustainable and needs to change.”
How did China’s government react? (Just as Western institutions gov and central bank)
- China gov sends in a team to restructure Evergrande (paying back investors as much as possible, but probably not with gov money)
- reduce borrowing costs (central bank interest rates)
After Hongkong, why does Taiwan mean trouble?
During the 2019 – 2020 Hong Kong protests citizens of the ex-UK-colony “Hong Kong” rebelled against the power grab of the Chinese government.
Hopes were high, that “Hong Kong” can stay a bit more “independent” a “democratic experiment” inside mainland China with “free speech” as stated in the “Declaration of Rights of Man” that was given birth by the French Revolution in 1789: (it was no easy birth)
“Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, except to respond to the abuse of this liberty, in the cases determined by the law.” (wiki)
But no. Hong Kong was “assimilated” into mainland China. Imho that might have been a mistake.
Of course China feared (when looking at Ukraine understandably) that Hong Kong would have become a US backed base for “troublemakers” into mainland China.
Taiwan is a highly developed high-tech nation, home to one of the largest (larger than Samsung) semi conductor companies, without them (currently) no HUAWAI, no IPhone and no Samsung Smart Phone would be possible to make.
Taiwan speaks Chinese, eats Chinese, but was the “retreat zone” of US backed “Nationalists” leading dissident “Chiang Kai shek” (sounds like “Shanghai Jack”). who lost the civil war against pro communist pro Soviet Mao Mainland China.
“In 1947, while the rest of the world was breathing a sigh of postwar relief, China was still deeply embroiled in conflict.” (pretty interesting Photos from 1984 Shanghai check em out!)
Now fast forward to 2022: this tweet of Spanish news reads like this:
“# China accuses # USA of encouraging # Taiwan to seek independence and warns that such moves could lead to war.” (hispantv.com)
China! Be clever! Don’t let yourself so easily be dragged into conflict by sabotage!
unfortunately – China – because it is the Chinese year of the tiger – is constantly building up it’s military – probably because they plan to invade Taiwan in 2022.
The US is more than happy to give them too “their Vietnam”. (costly and almost never ending war that consumes a lot of lifes and resources)
Hey China, Instead of invading Taiwan: what about invading Mars?
(there will be no resistance there and also no sanctions to be feared)
Right now the situation is like this, that Western countries (because of Chinese pressure) do not have embassies and official diplomatic communications with Taiwan.
It is unknown if Taiwan has nuclear weapons, probably not, but if they had, it would be just as much a provocation to China, as the Cuba missile crises 1962 was a provocation to the US under Kennedy. (completely unacceptable)
Then the cold war 2.0 would be official, a frightening situation of possible escalation, if heads are not cooled to think clearly temperature and communications are not kept open. (the “red” phone)
Status Quo
right now it’s a stand off – as long as no one moves or does anything irrational things can go on and stay quiet.
But how likely is that the US or the US completely out of control secret services and industrial military complex will keep quiet and do nothing irrational?
How likely is it – that dictatorship based nations – such as Russia and China – that were BUILD UP with Western money buying Eastern products over decades – will do nothing catastrophic with their new won military might?
Does China hate Taiwan?
No. But China regards Taiwan as much as belonging to “mainland China” as US regarded Cuba to be “mainland USA”.
Major difference: Cuba produces nice Rum, while Taiwan produces nice Microchips.
As we all know – Soviet union has agreed to withdraw the nuclear missiles from Cuba and USA promised (a promised that was actually largely kept) to stop trying to “win back” Cuba, while USA kept massive economic trade sanctions in place with Cuba to this day. (that’s why there are no new cars in Cuba)
Resume: badly managed selfish capitalism is as bad as a selfish “king”
Mankind needs to come up with completely new innovative systems of “how nations work” because a lot of what seemed to be “perfect” turns out to be as most what humans do: flawed designs.
so let’s make it better 🙂
but for this to work many people have to realize they are living the (unsustainable) life of a lunatic completely dependent on paper and 010101010 a completely undemocratic financial monetary system controlled by others – in a centralized way (actually to “fascism” can be translated as “accumulating power”) – and taught in universities like a brainwashing “religion” or “ideology” breading mental insane finance extremists.
- Ideally there would be well managed systems, that function fair and transparent for the good of all mankind
- that respects nature and is maximal on recycling and minimal on resources
- for the grand goal of sustainable survival of mankind in harmony with nature on this magnificent spaceship called earth 🙂 (yes happiness is allowed as well)
Ai Weiwei: “The West trying to understand China is like a soccer school trying to understand how to play a chess game.”
‘he says. “It’s a completely different sort of system. You have too much confidence in your own ideology, or the kind of language you’re using, but you don’t understand the situation.”’
…
“in China, there’s no privacy or individual will. Everything belongs to the Party, you are the property of the Party.”
One famous face of the Chicago School of catastrophic Economics is Friedman, a quote:
Yes – that is true Mr Friedman – trade products (no matter how bad in quality) is better than “trading” bullets at each other – BUT if globalized capitalism has no “opposition” no lawmakers that were not bribed by capitalists – it will be like a wrecking ball to society and the planet – sacrificing everything and everyone for the sake of profit (aka shiny numbers on harddisks).
So translated this means: it’s better to have reckless globalized capitalism that does not give a fuck about nature than nations ruled by ruthless dictators that send their people to senseless wars in hope to gain power or overthrow the enemies.
Completely agree on that – but maybe now is the time to think of something even better than reckless globalized capitalism, no? no ideas?
have a lot 🙂
“If you read Milton Friedman and other apostles of libertarianism, they don’t call for democracy but freedom—a very restrictive concept of freedom. It’s a freedom not of a working person to control their lives and work and so on, but it is their freedom to submit themselves to a higher authority. [2]”
“Chomsky is saying that libertarianism’s view on freedom has much irony because by submitting to a corporation, we are giving up some freedoms.” (freethoughtblogs.com)
What all libertarians do much better than the communists: sell their idea, which at first, sounds great, but in the details is catastrophic.
US$−1.88
