Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

[bpr]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

It does makes a difference when you got 700 million people in South and East China, which has an area a little larger than France. A lot of people don't realize that the coastal part of China is so densely population that it could be considered one huge metro.

All property bubbles will burst, but this is only a hiccup that will rebound within a couple years, assuming WWIII doesn't break out.

The demographics of China (700 million in the region discussed) do not equate with demographics in the Western world, only because of per capita income. If you had 700 million people making an average of $40k a year with a $5k credit line, the economics are entirely different than an area with the same number of people making an average of $10k a year with no credit line.

In other words,ten miles across the South of France may indeed be worth 10000 miles in China, if only because of the economic disparity between the peoples the rail serves.

I'm no economist, but it seems that government spending would have to make up the difference, and it would not likely wind up in the coffers of private industry.

I think c1ue was alluding to this here, and I didn't see a response:

This may be so - though I greatly question whether this is still true if 15 years of inflation are taken into account.

But it blatantly is not true for the rest of the previous 'Asian Tigers': Taiwan. Japan. Malaysia. Thailand.

The problem I have with these knee-jerk, straight-line, economic extrapolations is that they have uniformly been wrong.

In 1985 - it was said that Taiwan would exceed China in the size of its economy and its role in the world stage.

In 1991 it was Japan - remember the movie 'Gung Ho'? (doubly ironic as Gung Ho is more of a Chinese term, not Japanese)

Now supposedly it will be China Uber Alles.

I tell you right now - China will take its rightful place as a large nation in a multi-polar world.

But China's huge dependence on external energy is a huge problem, as are the consequences of China failing to carry through with its implicit social contract between China's government and its people: that working hard and scrimping today will lead to American style prosperity in the future.

That proposition is never going to happen.

Take all of China's strengths and weaknesses altogether and China will never be the next hyperpower, nor will it be the first among equals.

[renewable]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

My guess is that China will become a stronger economy than the US for one main reason: the network effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

Chinese people are, of course, just as bright & able as US people. As the internet becomes ubiquitous in China, the (chinese language) internet there will leverage 1.3 billion people. The US can only network 300 million.

Sure, they're behind now - but many of those Chinese students filling western technical universities will transfer knowledge from elderly western academics to the (chinese language) internet very quickly.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

My guess is that China will become a stronger economy than the US for one main reason: the network effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

Chinese people are, of course, just as bright & able as US people. As the internet becomes ubiquitous in China, the (chinese language) internet there will leverage 1.3 billion people. The US can only network 300 million.

Sure, they're behind now - but many of those Chinese students filling western technical universities will transfer knowledge from elderly western academics to the (chinese language) internet very quickly.

Speaking of which, how do Chinese and Japanese create thousands of language characters using only a keyboard?

[touchring]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

So, Sydney and Vancouver RE will burst when China's property bubble bursts; presumably, this is because Australia and Canada are highly dependent on commodity exports to China, correct?

It seems to me that when the Chinese RE bubble bursts, it will have a major impact on Sydney RE.

this is called the network effect.

[c1ue]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

Speaking of which, how do Chinese and Japanese create thousands of language characters using only a keyboard?

Software.

Japanese has a phonetic alphabet; in Microsoft Word (BTW, for Japanese a great program) when you type in several alphabet characters, with the right option enabled you are then presented with the one or more chinese kanji equivalent.

In Chinese it works by strokes - each kanji word is composed of one or more radicals. Similar to above but no phonetic alphabet component.

Korean is actually a meld: the words are similar to Chinese being standalone but the radicals are actually kind of phonetic.

Some say the rise of Asia is due to software - it certainly reduces the fluency barrier.

[touchring]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

What do the passengers do with that extra 50 minutes in Hangzhou that pays for the cost of arriving that early? If they don't produce more with that extra 50 minutes than they consumed building the rail and operating the train, there is no progress.

And if I can telecommute with a skype conference and save the trip altogether, what then?

Well, for a consumer economy to form, people must travel.

[touchring]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

c1ue believes that the mercantilist approach won't work. we've gone through this argument many times previously.

The demographics of China (700 million in the region discussed) do not equate with demographics in the Western world, only because of per capita income. If you had 700 million people making an average of $40k a year with a $5k credit line, the economics are entirely different than an area with the same number of people making an average of $10k a year with no credit line.

In other words,ten miles across the South of France may indeed be worth 10000 miles in China, if only because of the economic disparity between the peoples the rail serves.

I'm no economist, but it seems that government spending would have to make up the difference, and it would not likely wind up in the coffers of private industry.

I think c1ue was alluding to this here, and I didn't see a response:

[c1ue]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

c1ue believes that the mercantilist approach won't work. we've gone through this argument many times previously.

Not quite correct.

I said I didn't believe the mercantilist approach would work for China.

For small countries - it is quite possible to "leech" off a much larger one, picking off specific industries to specialize in and provide goods based on.

For a nation which is 1/6th the world's population, it cannot work - at least as defined as raising China's average standard of living to even say, Taiwan's.

Throw in the resource issues and the problem is insoluble with today's technology.

This is not to say, however, that there cannot be material improvement - albeit from China's standard of living today it will be geometrically harder.

[snakela]

Re: Bloomberg: China Economy to Beat U.S. by 2020 on Supercycle, Standard Chartered Says

I
Anyone here from the Navy? What kind of explosive is required to split a small ship into two?

While not my forte I saw at a conference (or read, can't recall) that its astonishly easy to break a ship in two. Blow the torpedo/mine/whatever beneath the ship to create a gas pocket. The bouyancy forces are now only on the bow and stern and it breaks under its own weight.

It would have been difficult for the North Koreans to get their submarine around the American Navy forces that were in the area at the time. The evidence presented that a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan was rather suspect.

Not if its diesel/electric which are quieter than any nuclear boat (when running on batteries). US under-surface warfare was generally designed to project power and check soviet projected power with other nuclear subs. Not worry about regular countries with electric boats that are only good for patrolling small areas or hiding brief periods. Sometimes the best way to beat a technological super-power is to take a step back in time, like Al-Queda and their mule-grams evade all the satellites, drones, signal intelligence thats been thrown at them.