6.6% is incredibly low and this number has been discussed a lot in Chinese forums.
as a Shenzhen guy,
I'd like to say the most important reason may be the price of the land has been increased quite a lot in the last years.
Many manufacturing companies, even Huawei moved out of Shenzhen this year, some go to Dongguan, Huizhou, which are other cities of Guandong, and some go to Vietnam, Thailand.
The reason is quite simple, they cannot afford the price of land to build the factory, and the salary cost is higher since the housing rent price also goes higher. Some factory owners work hard for a year, while the incoming is even less than the value increased of lands he owns.
So the business all goes to the lands, housing, malls. People don't know where is the top, but people believe is far more yet. Because Hong Kong, the city next to Shenzhen, has a higher land price.
For the future, the great bay area may solve this issue. Shenzhen will focus on the development of high-tech technology as a research center and enterprise center. The manufactory will move to Dongguan, Huizhou. While HongKong serves as a business/finance center. Guangdong will be the transaction center.
It is possible with the highly developed traffic net. The high-speed railway connected every city of the great bay area. People and things can move fast. Taking trains has become easier and more convenient than taking buses now.
When I last spoke with cadres, I'd say I scared them quite a bit when I said that they can't really hope to attract new industry now, and there is no imagined "higher value" manufacturers around who will come to supplant leaving ones.
And when they began to talk "what about trying retaining existing ones?" I said that they need not to look after SMEs as they are set to leave to cheaper countries invariably, but after the few remaining "giants" like Huawei, Allwinner, DJI, and likes of them.
They didn't believe me that Huawei will dare to leave in its sane mind, but it did. Now I can't get enough of pocket space for business cards from them, and can't attend a single industry event in peace...
Interesting points... question - What is the difference between the Business/Finance sector vs. the Transaction center - and why do they need to be different?
Business/Finance center I mean is related to financial activities. such as listing, financing, investment.
No real product sold/purchased here, people only play number games. like HKEx
Transaction center is only for selling and buying. no number magic, but trades. like Canton Fair
> Growth in the first three quarters of 6.6% was substantially down on the same period last year, and a lot slower than the first six months of this year.
Is it really that hard to include the growth rate for the previous period? Without that, it's impossible to put the "strain" into any kind of context.
> Indeed, the implication is that the economy barely grew at all between July and September.
How about a graph showing monthly growth rates?
> News that Shenzhen is losing steam has seemed more ominous because it is home to some of the country’s most dynamic companies and newest industries. ...
I'm not inclined to trust the anecdotes in the rest of the piece given that the author hasn't done basic numerical and visualization legwork.
I believe the issue is that China has tens of millions of people migrating to cities from the country side so it is critical the economy grows to absorb and create jobs for them.
So for example, if the population of a city grows at 9% and the economy grows at 6% your unemployment rate could grow by 3% and that’s not good (being simplistic here). Also inflationary issues could start to kick in as the price of goods may rise at a faster rate.
This is because the “quality” of China’s growth is, to use a technical term, kinda lousy. The way China measures growth and sets GDP targets encourages investment in projects that will never be profitable enough to cover initial costs. Short-term GDP growth trumps long-term GDP growth.
The Chinese government has long defied this economic logic. Since many of its investments aren’t profitable, the money to fund new economic activity comes instead via credit from state-run banks and, in the past, through shadow finance (loans made off bank balance sheets). It achieves this in part by controlling banks, though also through setting GDP targets that tell local government officials how much they must invest to earn promotions. (The 2019 target, by the way, is 6-6.5%, so it just barely made it last quarter.)
In short their economic numbers tend to be a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Any difference in between growth and expected growth can be a problem. If investments were made and money was lent assuming 12% growth, then 6% is going to hurt.
I find this surprising. It seems obvious to me that areas in countries that are much less wealthy grow much faster than wealthy countries (if they're improving). They are essentially catching up by implementing many of the same techniques wealthy countries already figured out.
Short-term demand seems to be shifting to Vietnam. This seems to have enabled a 'wait and see' approach re: China + tariffs. However, I'd question if Vietnam has enough long-term manufacturing capacity [1] [2] [3] to sustain the short-term advantage it seems to be currently enjoying.
Today, China has 16 of the world's 50 busiest ports, including Shenzhen at #3 (all as measured by 2018 TEU volume). [4] However, this is less indicative of capacity than it is of current demand / throughput.
Both countries could benefit from building more deep-water ports. China currently has two Panamax ports, with a third on the way. Vietnam has none and is building its first. The U.S., by comparison, has 42 by my count. [5]
Panamax is simply a much less important standard for China than for the USA because of proximity to the Panama Canal. Generally they can (and do) support larger ships but often with lower draft. Much of their shipping infrastructure is better for modern larger capesize vessels than the US. There's a reason they have something like 7-8 of the top 10 world porta in basically every category and it's not because they are worried about the Panamax standard
> China currently has two Panamax ports, with a third on the way. Vietnam has none and is building its first. The U.S., by comparison, has 42 by my count. [5]
I'm curious how Panamax or New Panamax berths make ports more economically viable? And whether US ports are more heavily import focused (and thus want a Neopanamax berth available should the need arise) vs. Chinese or Vietnamese ports? The reason I ask is because I spend too much time looking at ports on Google Maps, and to my eye no single N.A. port compares to most Chinese ports in terms of land area (and apparent capacity). [1] Do goods just sit idle in yards at Chinese ports?
Also, it looks like a single user has added ~30 ports to that list for China. [2] I'm not sure what to think of that.
[1] With the exception of Long Beach. Also this is only for container capacity, so I'm not thinking about roll-on/off, bulk and tanker ports.
A Chinamax ship is larger than a Panamax port. Surely if the standard is named after your country you have many ports large enough to handle them. I imagine the list was(is?) inaccurate.
I know the dry dock list on Wikipedia isn't accurate because it doesn't even include my shipyard!
Spot on. Sihanoukville is China's Panamax port in the southern region, which gives them access to Jakarta and then west onto Africa. Google about how China has taken over the city as well as the roads/rails they are building through Laos/Cambodia. It is epic destruction.
It is quite easy to move between Vietnam / Laos / Cambodia... I know it because I've personally driven on a motorbike many of the trucker back roads literally cut through the borders.
Vietnam will take a dozen more years to catch up. Hai Phong in the north is a very wealthy city due to all the shipping with China and Samsung, but politics and culture will get in the way for quite some time to come.
This is perhaps the first time I had heard of China's "Greater Bay Area" (according to wikipedia a "megalopolis" consisting of 11 cities besides Shenzhen) and, particularly in the context of this article on Shenzhen's SF-like woes, I can't help but be struck by this masterstroke of English-language branding on China's part.
China has a branding problem like no other nation. The Chinese businesses keep sacrificing long term goodwill and image over short term benefits by employing shallow tactics.
> Analysts have highlighted the steep plunge in private sector investment, for instance, which barely grew in the January to September period compared to a year ago, versus 12.3% growth over the first half of this year.
My understanding is that China's meteoric rise in places like Shenzhen has caused local wages to increase and the city to become more expensive to live and do business in, thus giving manufacturing an incentive to seek less expensive areas, like Vietnam, in which the sector is rapidly growing.
At least a part of the saga of rising salaries without rising productivity is due to China being very lax on interest rates and Xi's government genuinely believing in that being a recipe for growth.
Xi himself is said to be very emboldened by what he sees as success of his previous attempts of running the economy by throwing money on SOEs, and he uses that to parry any attempt of central committee to reason with him.
There is a well known video going around of the plenum session opening, where Xi basically says "bigger, better resourced state enterprises," and Li says "smaller, and nimbler ones" right after him.
Xi ignores that China saw its fastest growth at the time of Chinese rates being rather high.
Low rates demoralise the entrepreneurial community.
Too many business owners exit because they can go to higher rate countries for rentier lifestyle.
Too many business owners think it makes no sense to compete with people who can get billions at 1% interest and throw that to bruteforce their market position.
More so, this makes it really appealing for gambling minded, and well connected individuals to take state money, and gamble them on speculations, becoming instant billionaires.
This sums up china’s problem quite nicely. A good correction/recession would be very useful to being things back down to reality, but the party might be too brittle to weather it very well, especially since the cab has been kicked down the road for so long.
The USA and by extension the rest of the world is playing a similarly dangerous game with low interest rates, though in this case connections aren’t as required. The next downturn could make 2008 look mild when it all unravels.
I'm afraid nothing. If you read the article well, you'd see the city is a victim of its own success more than anything.
We in Shenzhen call what's going on recently as "Dubaisation" of the city. Land prices are on their way to stratosphere. Factory rentals follow rent price too. Working class is being priced out.
A factory owner can sell the remaining value on the land lease for up to 40 times the average annual rent. A lot of them do.
When factories close, they leave a lot of unemployed youth. Those youth who already been living from salary to salary will have hard time hanging there for longer.
Shenzhen is no longer a city where people come in hopes of making money more so than spending them. If people will not have confidence in making more cash tomorrow, than they can make today, they will no longer be coming to Shenzhen, and go to other cash cow cities.
Once they leave, they will not be coming back, and restarting manufacturing in the city will be getting harder and harder. This is why it is very important for city's party cadres to find ways to stop labour force exodus. It is important to prevent a feedback loop where low labour availability will driver more factory closures.
High incomers will hang around in the city only for as long as there will be industrial companies to hire top tier professionals. We can not hope that the city can live off high incomers alone if their employers have no reason to stay in Shenzhen.
If you think about it, what's happening in Shenzhen is basically what has happened in most major cities in wealthy western countries. As the city becomes richer manufacturing slowly disappears, because new manufacturing is too expensive to set up.
> We in Shenzhen call what's going on recently as "Dubaisation" of the city.
How does this compare to Beijing and Shanghai I wonder? I'd have to imagine all the top Chinese cities, with their absurd real estate prices, are seeing similar
You could make similar analogies to top American cities too of course
Beijing and Shanghai had relatively little industry to begin with. They don't have to "battle" the phenomenon to survive, their economies, and people lives will not crash from that.
Maybe manufacturing was just a stage in the development of Shenzhen and the area will develop like other regions in the world have.
There will be some bad years, but overall, Shenzhen will not go back to the stone-age. Certainly not a Detroit scenario as Shenzhen is not a single industry,
Who will need you to manage them, if they can manage themselves by themself?
This up for the point that one can both make his own products, and make money from it too, without any greedy "helpers"
Unlike China-US trade where OEMs can't do anything with American superiority at marketing, the brand value, and your "management" will mean close to nothing outside of USA.
There is a lot of design, engineering and manufacturing expertise in Shenzen that is unapproachable or unattainable in the US or Europe. Mechanical engineering, design for manufacturing, etc.
But they do, they have factories making their stuff in shandong, hebei, and other places where Foxconn can put up new factories. There will always be places for factories, they don’t have tk be in or even near expensive big cities.
>Most citizens don’t mind the Chinese government, or at least think it’s better than alternatives...
Sure... because economically things are relatively good, and I imagine the constant attempt to brainwash every citizen from birth has something to do with it.
Many Muslim women, when asked, will say that they chose to wear a burqa, or the niqab, but I think most of us here know that they've been conditioned to think that way.
If you ask most (Han) Chinese, the thing they prize the most is stability.
Nearly every change in political system, or power struggle, has resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese for the past two centuries. The current post-Deng CPC model, for all its faults, does have peaceful transitions of power.
It remains to be seen whether or not today's wealthier China would also consider economic stability to be just as important.
Hu Jintao was never jailed and the anti-corruption campaign wasn't so much targeting his supporters, but instead people Hu couldn't afford to get rid of, such as former security minister Zhou Yongkang. No one received worse punishment than a prison sentence, so even if you count the anti-corruption campaign as part of the power transition, it was still a peaceful one.
> Nearly every change in political system, or power struggle, has resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese for the past two centuries. The current post-Deng CPC model, for all its faults, does have peaceful transitions of power.
Regime changes have been almost always bloody. That is true everywhere in the world. Chinese has over 2000 years of history to prove that point.
That statement is ironically correct under most context of Chinese culture. The definition of “freedom” for common Chinese is just like that and few points a finger
Because we've been brainwashed into thinking we aren't brainwashed and only others have been brainwashed. Also, people love to feel superior and enjoy paternalistic condescension.
I mean, not /that/ strange or surprising that it exists given our evolutionary survival traits, but whats surprising is how poor we are by default at being able prevent it.
That's not surprising. Absolute truth doesn't exist in the real world. Why do you expect humans to be born with innate knowledge of something that is impossible?
Well, one of the defining characteristics of humans and human intelligence is empathy--the ability, often involuntary, to imagine or predict how someone or something else experiences the world. Or at least the incredible extent and depth of our empathy. Mammals in general often display basic empathy, presumably a reflection of their mammalian offspring caregiving instincts, which in turn is presumably at the root of our own empathy.
It's not at all surprising our empathy is selective and context dependent, though. What's surprising is that we exhibit it to the extent we do, however inconsistently.
And if you truly believe that there exists no absolute truth then I invite you to walk off a cliff. It would be less of a leap than assuming that just because culture is complex and often inherently subjective that there is no absolute truth.
There are absolutely no square circles and there are absolutely no round squares.
Definition is identity, self-reflective.
Absolute truth must exist. If there was no such thing as absolutely truth then it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth. In other words, a logical contradiction.
Absolute truth exists relative to axioms. Given x, y. Even the law of identity is not metaphysically necessary; Deleuze argues that difference and repetition are prior to identity.
> Absolute truth must exist. If there was no such thing as absolutely truth then it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth. In other words, a logical contradiction.
This argument still assumes absolute truth! It is made in the framework in which truths can be absolute as opposed to relative, but what I'm saying is that this dichotomy is invalid. The more accurate statement against absolute truth is not "it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth" but rather "absolute truth is nonsense because absolute and relative truth are not different except within a defined set of axioms".
It's like having an absolute position in space. A position in space is only ever absolute given a frame of reference, because that's what defines it. Assuming an axiom is what defines an absolute truth. To ask someone what their position is without a defined frame of reference is nonsense.
> Absolute truth must exist. If there was no such thing as absolutely truth then it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth. In other words, a logical contradiction.
We can play the metalogical game the other way too.
If all statements about X being true are language for "I the speaker believe X to be true but I understand the statement's truth is relative to my perspective", then all statements about truth are non-absolute, including this one without contradiction.
Are you really equating the US (where I live) to China? I don't imagine anyone in this thread is dumb enough to see the comparison as "US good, China bad", but if you think they reside at about the same level on the oppression and tyranny scale... I don't know what to say to you.
It has nothing to do with "culture" and everything to do with an oppressive regime's stranglehold on its citizens.
I bet you an average Chinese would be offended if you said China and N. Korea are about equally bad, he'd also say "oppressive regime's stranglehold on its citizens".
As other commenters are pointing out, the US is not as bad as China, but there are shitty things in the US too. The average Chinese probably thinks "I'm pretty free to live my life, the economy is ok, what's your problem?", which is not far from what the average American thinks, and both ignore the terrible terrible shit that they don't feel affect them, or they think has always been like that. E.g. corrupt law enforcement and elite, inadequate healthcare, foreign policy that invites wrath, the treatment of minorities...
>I bet you an average Chinese would be offended if you said China and N. Korea are about equally bad, he'd also say "oppressive regime's stranglehold on its citizens".
Who said China and N. Korea are equivalent? Certainly not me. I have no idea what the end of that sentence was meant to mean.
The second paragraph is just more whataboutism and creating another false equivalence while pretending not to. Of course we (our government), like pretty much every country on Earth, have done shitty things and continue to do shitty things. The difference is that we, as private citizens, can speak out against it, protest, and vote their asses out of office. I wonder where the Uyghurs would prefer to live?
You already acknowledge that there is some oppression and tyranny in the USA, yes I'm very aware that China is much much worse. The equivalence I'm trying to make is the idea that the average citizen in both countries probably think "my government is not that bad". You're screaming that the Chinese have it much worse, and I was trying to draw the picture that an average Chinese would probably scream "North Koreans have it so much worse!".
The point is, you'd call that Chinese person brainwashed, since they are ignoring their government's oppression and tyranny. Guess what I'm trying to say? It's that at some level you also have been brainwashed. Yes China is a lot worse, but if you ask a Swede what they think about Americans thinking they have a good country, they'd probably laugh and say "Brainwashed fools!".
Yes the Uyghurs would prefer to live in the USA. Guess where a black person would prefer to live, if you tell them about the difference of police interaction in USA vs in Scandinavia? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd8ZTKU8csw
> The difference is that we, as private citizens, can speak out against it, protest, and vote their asses out of office.
How is that working out for you? The Koch brothers are seemingly able to override your choices...
I've lived in the US all my life, and I've been subjected to propaganda my entire life as well. Everyone grows up in a society that tries to justify why it's the best and everything else is worse, point at a dozen good qualities of America and I will point at a dozen evil ones. America has and continues to do horrific things. I had to see that broken down with my own eyes to figure out that I was raised on lies just as much as any other oppressive nation.
Yet there are degrees of oppression, propaganda, and tyranny. It's not black and white and no country is perfect, but that doesn't mean we're on equal footing.
I think disregarding the beliefs of others as brainwashing is not giving why they feel the way they do a thorough enough examination; even if they genuinely do live in a manner oppressive to their own freedoms, it's often that they accept it because they think it's necessary to avoid the things that they abhor in the way WE live. And in my own opinion, many things about the way we live legitimately are worth abhorring.
>And in my own opinion, many things about the way we live legitimately are worth abhorring.
Sure, but how can you argue that people are free to accept anything that is forced upon them? I'm not sure any large number of have true "freedom", but some certainly have more than others.
I know I live a life that is driven by a need to fulfill debts that I was tricked into by a society that told me I had to go into debt to become successful. Now I have little choice in what I do but to make as much money as I can in order to make those debts go away and my desires and passions have little say in the matter. I'm grateful for what I have, but it sure doesn't feel like freedom. American freedom is proportional to your wealth, and competition for that wealth is ceaseless. I might be willing to give up a lot of my "freedoms" to be free of that.
You assumed there was an equation there, but there wasn't from the comment. That one may be blind to one's own inadequacies doesn't mean their calling out other's is true, but IMO taking the high ground that there's a clear better should only be taken from an actually eyes open perspective, and even then that position would be shown with a heck of a lot more empathy. People tend to just take up the moral high ground and trumpet much much better they are and not be productive in improving anything.
That's a very slippery slope - haven't you been conditioned to think individuality and personal freedoms are vital? The concerned citizens of the PRC would love to help you with that.
> Many Muslim women, when asked, will say that they chose to wear a burqa, or the niqab, but I think most of us here know that they've been conditioned to think that way.
"Know"? The practice is spreading among Jewish women in Israel, who appreciate that it's a strong visual signal of their piety.
Should we conclude that they've been conditioned to think that way too?
>Many Muslim women, when asked, will say that they chose to wear a burqa, or the niqab, but I think most of us here know that they've been conditioned to think that way.
We all are conditioned by the culture we live in. We generally think our culture is better than theirs regardless what our culture or their culture is. People can accept a lot of limitations to their freedom as long as life is decent and people don't feel that they need more. Think of all of the libertarian arguments about how a large government limits the freedom of people, but most people in the west are okay with most of those limitations.
Western countries might not be running active government propaganda, but things like Hollywood absolutely push a certain type of culture into society.
You forgot to mention. The CIA and US Government provides active funding to Hollywood. The propaganda here is known as manufactured consent. It's actually pretty ingenious.
I'm sure Hare would be proud, but back in reality we have to find real answers to moral questions.
There are actully objective truths in life. Whether or not people can accept oppression due to cultural influences is irrelelevant; it's not a good thing. Freedom to speak and, therefore, to think, is preferable over the alternative. Not all arguments are created equal, and comparing the influence of Hollywood (while certainly real!) to that of an authoritarian government is a joke.
Yes, it is interesting that people tend to believe the one true religion happens to be the one they were born into and raised with.
Just like the USA is #1 and the USA stands for freedom. Everyone is subject to brainwashing by the society they're raised in. Anyone telling you they're a completely independent person is probably fooling themselves. That there's not that much discontent is a nice feature for those who are contented.
>but I think most of us here know that they've been conditioned to think that way.
Haven't you and I been conditioned by the ideology of the liberal conception of freedom, human rights, "democracy" and morality? Do not those concepts also have their critics?
Yes, I am engaging in whataboutism - but sometimes that's a good thing to see just how far the slippery slope can slide. If the Chinese populace, with its faulty ideology, and the Muslim women wearing burquas, with their faulty ideology, can be said to have such a "false consciousness", why is your (or my) ideology so much less faulty or immune to criticism? What about the very ideology you espouse that declares that overriding the will of people is justified if people are "conditioned"?
It is very hard, rare in fact, to escape false consciousness. It just so happens that our false consciousness is a little different to those in other places.
I'd love to hear your criticisms of "freedom, human rights, and democracy [representative government]" in contrast to the authoritarianism and xenophobia of China.
First, China is not xenophobic. Rather, Sino-phobic can pretty well describe a lot of Americans if their words are true to their hearts.
Secondly, freedom and rights all have prices. One's freedom is another one's lack thereof. Say you are free to speak your mind, what if I don't like to hear it? Like the N word, or anything that is not appropriate to pronounce even in "freedom of speech" countries. Is there complete freedom? Are there unlimited rights? Of course not. The issue is just where we should draw the line.
As to democracy, well, how do you tell it apart from populism? How to stop the elites from hijacking it to their own good? You know, if the propaganda machine is working full force, democracy or not is not that different. And you lose the efficiency.
IMHO, a mature person, and the collective of mature persons, aka a mature society, should know that there is nothing inherently, and absolutely good or bad. Everything requires compromises and tradeoffs. If you point to something and ridicule anyone else's unkind opinion torwards it, it is you being naive.
Well a lot of people criticize our freedom to bear arms. People criticize free speech a lot. Despite what you've been told, freedom isn't held in high regard anywhere really. We just give it a lot of lip service.
> human rights
What is it? UN declaration of human rights originally had absolute "free speech". Then they started limiting it to protect religions, identity, etc. One human right is for free assembly and community. Another is for free movement. What happens when these "human rights" collide? Healthcare is a "human right". Should other nations invade the US to give us our "human rights"? Right to life is a human right? Should people who believe fetuses are persons invade to stop abortions? Things aren't as black and white as you think they are. Whose human right is more valuable?
> and democracy [representative government]
There are plenty of arguments against democracy. Go read about the founding fathers and their opinions of democracy. That hated the idea so much that they created a government to guard against democracy and only gave voting rights to a tiny fraction of the nation. The first presidential election ( for Washington ) had low single digit voting percentage.
Naively talking about "freedom, human rights, and democracy" sounds great at a superficial level, but when you get down to details, it isn't as straightforward and rosy as you think. The only people who talk about freedom, human rights, and democracy so cavalierly are those who never actually thought about it.
Frankly, the only thing "freedom, human rights, and democracy" has been used for in the past few decades is to use it to justify invading other countries. I'm sure all the millions of murdered vietnamese, iraqis, south americans, etc sure appreciate the "freedom, human rights, and democracy" we've dropped on them. It's pretty much a repackaged neocolonial "white man's burden".
I'm not sure what you mean by "contrast" - China is absolutely an authoritarian country, but that does not negate the criticisms[0] of the liberal conceptions of freedom and human rights in the West - we now have to points to criticize: the Western ideology, and the Chinese one. Freedom is absolutely an important thing to have in society, but that doesn't mean that the Western (or Chinese) conceptions of it are the right ones.
To say that the philosophical underpinnings of liberal freedom and democracy are immune from criticism (feminist, Marxist, or otherwise) is tantamount to dogmatism. China's concepts may be worse than the Western concepts, but the Western ones certainly aren't beyond reproach.
What you consider freedom (and Human Rights) is likely different than I. However, in the US you get to live with the tyranny of the majority, regardless of what either of us think. The fact that it's (largely) an ignorant mass in charge vs a specific individual (and their motivated power structures) is different and yet the same. Culturally, China tolerates more. Give the USA a couple thousand years and it will look identical.
No form of government has lasted the test of time, but authoritarian governments have statistically populated the longest lasting ones. In modernity, there has been a brief renaissance, but I don't believe that corruption of a modern democracy will take longer than it did for Rome ANYWHERE, including the USA.
It's hard to be critical of becoming successful as robber barons of the USA, when there's so little culture and so much of the capital to waste. Don't mistake those qualities for innate value.
A lot of women will swear by the burqa even if they’ve been bought up in western societies and we’re less conservative in their younger days. You underestimate the contentment that comes from prescribed piety.
lol, as a Chinese I can say that most people here do not want to overthrow the government in disruptive ways. We can see both the good and bad things the government is doing. As for the bad thing, every government has issues, the main issue is whether the people and government itself can see them, and fix them. I would say that the system has enabled the people to change the government in the way the people want, and have the government enact on policies that benefit the people and hear people's demands. The process is different but nonetheless, through the past 30 years, the government through its actions demonstrated it is working for the people. Chinese people are not stupid, if its a rouge state up top we will overthrow it. The society will not be this stable. And no, if there is discontent, no amount of police and oppression is able to prevent a civil unrest.
The government is very afraid of a regional uprising turning into a national one, so they're willing to do a lot to prevent that from happening. Arresting protesters and censoring the news are stop-gap measures; in many cases they don't have much choice but to address whatever grievance was leading to protests in the first place.
It's not a very efficient system, but frequently it does work somehow.
I lived in china and still travel there a lot. There are third party measurements to air pollution stats and they tell the same story as the official stats. And plus we can see it from their own eyes. The air quality in Beijing in recent years is much better than before. Actually environmental policy is a interesting one. A lot of air pollution comes from private factories, steel mills and coal factories etc. If you talk to a lot of middle to low income Chinese people, they couldnt care less about the air quality and would love to continue to produce the previous way and earn money. If it was a rule of majority, I doubt the air quality in China would improve as quick. What the government did was implement strict emission controls laws. This cause a lot of people I know discontent, but the government also provided subsidies and other policies to help polluting industries to improve. Now, looking at the sky the smog issues is much less, there has being big impact to the industries but the economy still grew indicating that the polluting industries has evolved.I think a lot of people are now happier. And people dont get locked up for having benign comments on wechat, I criticize the ccp and government all the time. But if you spread rumors online and spread anti-government messages like "death to president", "fuck the ccp and lets revolution" or something, you can get banned or worse gets a talked by the police or a 15 day detention (this is based on anti-rumor law). And no you dont get locked up or disappeared or sent to "Concentration camps". As to why the government is so paranoid about this, China does not have a stable political system yet. The political system I mean the entire government structure, in the US that is the legislative branch (congress), executive branch (the white house), the legal branch (supreme court). In the US we criticize the president and the members of congress but we rarely criticize the legitimacy of congress the white house the supreme court. The system forms the long term stable governing body in the states. It allows people to voice their demands, government to internalize the demands, and resolve societal conflicts. In China the governance system is not as established, the ccp and government is still trying to find a stable long term governing structure. People have to understand China is very diverse, I say more geopolitically diverse than the US. In the US while people comes from all over the world, people are united by common political ideologies and common language (english). They are also too spread out in geography to be a political force in elections. In China, each region has a different demographic mix, its own sense of belonging, and its own dialect of Chinese that has completely different pronunciations. Contrary to popular belief, there are a lot of beneficial policies to minority races in China including affirmative action policies, some Han people are discontent about the preferential treatment. In an environment like this, is a lot easier for populism to take place, and for one group could gain political power and enact policies to discriminate against the other group. Conflict between groups might cause the country to break apart. We can see this issue in democratic nations as well, like recently in India with the citizenship bill. (I know people now wants to talk about xinjiang but it would be another massive debate). Many people in China do not feel the US model is able to govern China that is why China is trying to come up its own model. As for freedom speech, in China there is more emphasis on the responsibility when you speak in public setting. If its a legitimate issue, you can speak out, there has been many law and policy changes due to people speaking out. But if you are spreading purely hateful speech with no reasoning and argument to back it up, or cause social unrest, the social platform (wechat) might censor you.
I have lived and traveled in China as well. You are trying to explain Chinese deficiencies with exceptions. For every exception you state, there are plenty more conflicting cases that are extremely under-reported or completely withheld from even Chinese local media, let alone to foreign press. There are plenty of people that are being jailed and publicly forced to admit guilt for crimes they did not commit. There are people (including high profile people) that are kidnapped, tortured, killed. There is a complete bribe system to get general care in the hospital. Sure, I agree that the lives of the average Chinese has improved in relative terms but the way in which it is received is at the cost of the true potential of the nation. Tell me when regular citizens have access to the full internet and the uncensored thoughts and ideas of the free world. Until then, China is just an experiment of Plato's Allegory of the Cave and a richer version of North Korea.
It's easy to accept the Chinese narrative when you don't get the full picture due to the CCP propaganda that has fully infiltrated western media. The US "system" is full of issues and for all its faults, it is still governed by rule of law whereas in China, your life and well-being are at the whim of a dictator.
Funny how US citizens are so quick to react at criticizing their own government but people in countries like China cannot even do so without being censored or arrested.
When you look at revolutions that resulted in democracies you can see that it was mostly the upper class that wanted the conflict. There is a reason why the protests have started in Hongkong instead of some random village.
I think China's next move should be to turn all their citizens into programmers. They have all the factories, the fabrication equipment, and the general know-how.
And by doing so, then they get all the network effect benefits. They become programmers, researchers, programming language designers, QA engineers, systems analysts, etc., and eventually technical managers and business leaders. And they also get all the benefits of having a very technical and highly educated workforce. It's interesting that a recent survey of their school children, said that 56% wanted to become Astronauts.
The next phase of their national development should probably be to move into design, research, development, and ultimately indigenous intellectual property.
The past 10 years of smartphones have changed the country, that their children are exposed to all the software and technology at a young age. This should make it easier for them to become engineers, programmers, scientists, and mathematicians, as they enter college.
Their current generation of engineers has proven that they have the technical capabilities to achieve that. They appear to be very good at building massive infrastructure. So they can plan, design, architect, and build out massive things (high speed rail, rockets, military planes). But let's see if they can build out small things, like software systems (OS, compilers, AI, etc.)
It will be interesting if Huawei takes the lead, and their new Harmony OS becomes a viable contender in the mobile space in China. Or if it even displaces Windows and Linux as the primary desktop or server operating system within China. Maybe Microsoft would eventually port over Word and Excel to the Harmony OS?
And I'm still waiting for them to come up with their own programming language. Although this might be a tall order, as C is quite popular there. However, the guy who created Vue.js is of Chinese descent, but it seems America snatched him away. Now I could be wrong, but the current perception appears as if the Trump administration is hell bent on alienating everyone of Chinese descent from working in America.
If they can succeed at all this, then a slowdown in the Shenzhen manufacturing economy for export, is irrelevant. They would have evolved to the next level. They would build out their own software systems for internal consumption, and eventual export.
It is a spillover from Hong Kong, but in the sense that mainland capital that would have entered HK is now investing in Shenzhen and is hence making the city too expensive for manufacturing.
as a Shenzhen guy,
I'd like to say the most important reason may be the price of the land has been increased quite a lot in the last years.
Many manufacturing companies, even Huawei moved out of Shenzhen this year, some go to Dongguan, Huizhou, which are other cities of Guandong, and some go to Vietnam, Thailand.
The reason is quite simple, they cannot afford the price of land to build the factory, and the salary cost is higher since the housing rent price also goes higher. Some factory owners work hard for a year, while the incoming is even less than the value increased of lands he owns.
So the business all goes to the lands, housing, malls. People don't know where is the top, but people believe is far more yet. Because Hong Kong, the city next to Shenzhen, has a higher land price.
For the future, the great bay area may solve this issue. Shenzhen will focus on the development of high-tech technology as a research center and enterprise center. The manufactory will move to Dongguan, Huizhou. While HongKong serves as a business/finance center. Guangdong will be the transaction center.
It is possible with the highly developed traffic net. The high-speed railway connected every city of the great bay area. People and things can move fast. Taking trains has become easier and more convenient than taking buses now.