Good morning Don, Thank you for providing another potato patch for me to visit and to wake up its owner by using the said potatoes on window of sleeping quarter:0)
<<… PBS program last night. It was very informative …>>
The program was not as informative for me as for other viewers on SI, because my life revolves around China, visiting factories, talking to taxi drivers, hob-nobbing with officialdom, chatting up the bankers, pummeling the reporters, and listening about the outcomes for crooks that got pulled from their perch.
My work, since 1983, has been enormously satisfying, properly remunerative, and, yes, educational. I thank my star(s) in that I have what I want for my work. However, I believe the program, like many PBS productions, properly reflects on a part of China, the good, bad and ugly, allowing each viewer to get out what they want from it.
<<… re-affirmed my concerns about Internet type bubble forming there>>
This is what you got out of the program. BTW, did you play the iDotCom and eSlashNet bubble of 1999 for all that it could have been worth?
Together with what I know in addition to the program content, I got the following key messages from the program:
(a) The problems of China are known to its people and officialdom, and all problems, bar none, are being discussed, studied, and solutions are being experimented with;
(b) The contradiction between the haves and have-nots will persist due to size and inertial of country and scale of economy, but the deluge of wealth does trickle, especially now that the western part of China becomes the socio-economic experimental lab;
(c) The struggle over distribution of pie will continue, as it must in a rapidly developing economy, as it did not during all the decades of economic stagnation; and
(d) The folks are, at the core, one people, speaking one language, under one leadership, working hard, learning diligently, saving cautiously, and above all, family-value oriented, resilient and optimistic citizens.
<<IT seems likely China will head down the same path as all of the others. It seems human nature translates the same way in Chinese as it does in any other language>>
I know what you were trying to mean, but, turning the sentence on its side, and without changing a single word, you would be right, and when accomplished, we would have the biggest abracadabra in history, especially financial history. Bubbles are not what collapses are made of. You cannot say on the one hand that China will collapse, and on the other it will become one big financial bubble, without giving the interim glory fair mention.
On the flip side, I got the feeling from your limited original posting that you figure China will collapse because it cannot generate a financial bubble, because it cannot maintain growth, because it will breakup into 31 independent states. I am confused.
Then there is this …
Message 18581790
<<Yes it showed 3-4 levels of Chinese prosperity or lack of it, over a 5-7 year period and how China is changing for the good and bad. The quickly widening gap between the haves and have nots. The sacrifices being made by many families in the hope that their child can have a better life.>>
… so far so good, and then pessimistically …
<< It appears to be a train wreck waiting to happen.>>
Forgetting that for 300 years China has danced at the edge of the precipice. Multinational invasions, fall of dynasty, civil war, Japanese invasion, civil war, Korean War, Great Leap Backward, Vietnam War, Cultural Revolution, and TianAnMen did not wreck China, and by your illogic, perhaps constant and dynamic economic growth, ad nauseam social experimentation, ad infinitum education reform, so on and so forth political jiggering will do the trick?
I have noticed how the NYT, WSJ, Business Week, Washington whatever and Economist whatever else have gradually changed their editorial bent, from “China collapsing” to “China growth stat not real” to “China is growing but will collapse”. I guess these editors felt that the truth can only be denied for so long, given the ever increasing visitor reports streaming back home.
How the hope springs eternal, and how frustrating it must all be;0)
<<Just the nightmare of trying to keep 1.2 billion people productive and feed says it all IMHO>>.
… Therefore you should think about how brilliant the reality all is, under somebody’s leadership, supported by some kind of people, transforming, in renaissance fashion, leading on to TeoTwawKi, after passing TPonRrr (definitions in this post Message 18586475 )
<<A HUGE BUBBLE in the making.>>
Therefore you should think about how to play the bubble, instead of fuss-potting about how it is going to pop. Bubbles are a fact of dynamic life, like muscle aches and hangovers.
As to the state of the bubble, I detect no bubble in China at this moment, and I am the one who live off and thrive in bubbles. Prices are tepid in China, Shanghai real estates are tame, and HK equity market holds no interest, paying a dividend between 3-10%.
Chugs, Jay |
