They're just like us! 🤣
it's complicated 🤣
12
China’s Political Consultation System: The Part of Chinese Politics the West Never Understood
(www.grumpychineseguy.com)
I don't entirely agree his view on the power balance in east Asia in the last part, but it's still an interesting perspective from somebody actually in China.
he generally seems to make sense in this interview, I don't think he's saying anything controversial here
While inequality in China is still high, you have to look beyond a single metric to make a meaningful comparison.
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China%E2%80%99s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
Student debt in China is virtually non-existent because education is not run for profit. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jlim/2016/08/29/why-china-doesnt-have-a-student-debt-problem/
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
People in China also enjoy high levels of social mobility than those living in US https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
it's absolutely hilarious how Trump admin is trying to set up the US as some neutral third party here
Basically, it look like the Americans have been getting their information from the Ukrainians and the Europeans, and they've been told it's all going great. Then Pokrovsk collapses, and the whole front is now a visible disaster. Now it's no longer possible to deny that Russia is winning. Meanwhile, the one thing Trump is most concerned with is not being seen as a loser. Hence, he can't be the one who loses this war.
So the deal is very simple. The Americans rush to cobble together their 28-point plan. The Russians looked at it and said that it is a good basis for further discussions. But the Europeans? They're already screaming no, no, we can't accept it!
And now Trump can say you don't like my beautiful, perfect deal? It's all yours. You handle it. And when it all goes south he'll say, "I had the deal. It was the best deal ever. Those Europeans, they didn't want it. They fought, and look what happened. A total shame. They should have taken the deal."
I didn't notice either until you mentioned it
The thing that I find frustrating is how people just keep falling for the narrative. We literally have decades of these predictions of China collapsing, then a new collapse theory comes out, and everybody just gobbles it up uncritically. It's like people have the memory of a goldfish. If the past dozen predictions were wrong, maybe it's time to start developing a bit of skepticism, and maybe start wondering why the media is so consistently wrong on the subject. I suspect the reality of the whole thing is that most people were successfully brainwashed into hating China out of principle, and then when they read these stories they're just seeing what they want to see, and hence no further investigation is needed.
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you can actually click on the summary in gemini to expand it