"If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident."
These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their families disposed. These are fat and lazy billionnaires who have siphoned off local schools, hospitals, people, environments, and is about to abscond with riches. These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited.
"In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion. By comparison, the median wealth of American politicians was just over $1 million in 2013, according to CNN Money. "
http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-...
Your quote compares the combined wealth of Chinese politicians with the median wealth of American politicians. That's a misleading statistic if I ever saw one.
In addition, it's the wealth of the very top level politicians in China vs median wealth of all politicians (If I understand correctly) in US. A fair comparison should be the senators and representatives.
463.8/(106+97) = avg of ~2.28 billion per china congress critter
Edit: as pointed out below, the math is more complex as there is 2987 seats in the NPC and I can't quickly find numbers for the number of total seats in the CPPCC, so the average is certainly drastically lower than the above.
Those are the numbers of people who are on the rich list, not the total in those political bodies.
To get the average per "congress critter" you'd have to get the total in each body, and get the net worths of the ones not on the rich list. I suspect it's less than 2.28B, but still a good bit higher than in the US.
You could put a lower limit on it by assuming the rest of the NPC members are flat broke: 463.8/2987 = $155 million per congress critter, or about 150x the average for US Congress critters.
> In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion.
Ummm... The NPC has 2987. Put in context 97 of 2987 are rich or 3%. That's a far better stat than you'll find for the US senate or congress. The CPPCC is larger.
Add to that the comparison to the median wealth all American Politicians, your comment is all smoke and mirrors. Compare likes to likes.
I'm having trouble finding these numbers for our current congress, but in 2009-10, out of 435 House reps 168 had law degrees, 83 had a masters degree, 23 had a PhD, 17 had a medical degree. 32 had nothing beyond an associate's degree; that leaves 109 with just bachelor's degrees. All numbers according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_111th_United_St...
Your typical person with an advanced degree in their late 50s probably has some retirement savings. And note that the cited article says some of the numbers (but not all!) include the values of the House members homes. It's really not that hard to hit $800k if you count home equity and retirement savings, assuming you have any reasonable amounts of either...
Apple is looking to China for further sales growth. Fewer Chinese buying iPhones is probably a bigger problem for them than higher manufacturing costs.
Tim Cook has already made a big deal about "currency headwinds" to explain Apple's slowing revenue growth.
Why would they care? They are selling a Chinese made product to the Chinese.
Maybe not as profitable due to exchange arbitrage, but still profitable since the costs go down exactly as much as the retail price does. Engineering for the Chinese market already exists due to all the other markets, so it's essentially money left on the table if they don't.
I don't think they'd go that far. They're mainly interested in controlling information. Nationalization, that would only accelerate the decline of the economy by spooking foreign companies who would soon high tail it leaving behind tons of idle machinery and idle workers, something the PLA would rather avoid.
I think this decision will accelerate the spooking of foreign companies. Need to take a long hard look at whether your industry is one where China will want foreign investment over the long term.
They are ultimate in charge of handling unrest, so while the CCP is the face of the government, ultimately its power and control come from the PLA. When the "incident" in tian an men occurred, it was the PLA who had to go in, they are rather loathe to have to go mop up again.
Foxconn (Taiwanese manufacturer for Apple) decision to invest a whopping $5 billion in India has caused unease in China as it marks the first top international firm opting for India amid a slowdown in the Chinese economy.
It looks like the dictator/autocratic states in Asia (Russia/China) with its economy collapsing, is resorting to territorial aggression against neighboring countries in order to get resources and get people to look away from its collapse. China exports fall 11.2% in January, imports down 18.8% http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/14/china-releases-trade-data-for.... Russia's ruble collapses to lowest level, with "Inflation reached 12.5% in 2015 while real wages kept dropping, leaving many people much worse off." everhttp://money.cnn.com/2016/01/20/investing/russia-ruble-recor...
With Russia bumping against all of Europe, and China bumping against Japan/Korea/Taiwan/Vietnam/Malaysia/Indonesia/Phillipines, this is going to be bad for world stability.
some data points about the Russia/Chinese dictators that some people love (or they're just paid trolls from Russian/Chinese government)
Putin is worth $200 billion, "After 14 years in power of Russia, and the amount of money that the country has made, and the amount of money that hasn't been spent on schools and roads and hospitals and so on" http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-former-largest-foreig...
From the government's point of view, lowering the degree to which people are upset about what the government is doing is a feature of the education system, not a bug.
I think it would be maximum of 20% devaluation. But if we look at the numbers, 20% devaluation would put it back to USD to CNY @ 7.8, this is 2006 / 2007 numbers. This is right before the financial crisis.
Since then China GDP have grown 4x!!! 4X
In that sense I don't think CNY were ever properly valued.
The China's own ponzi economy will be mirroring the collapse of Ezubo .
"So in two short decades, China has erected a monumental Ponzi economy that is economically rotten to the core. It has 1.5 billion tons of steel capacity, but “sell-through” demand of less than half that amount.... The same is true for its cement industry, ship-building, solar and aluminum industries—to say nothing of 70 million empty luxury apartments and vast stretches of over-built highways, fast rail, airports, shopping mails and new cities.
In short, the flip-side of the China’s giant credit bubble is the most massive malinvesment of real economic resources—-labor, raw materials and capital goods—ever known"
Anything for more GDP growth! I wonder if the insane over-provisioning is a genius scheme to monopolise worldwide manufacturing for a century (even at massive cost to their population) or just a drive to keep up unsustainable growth statistics. Either way the game will be up eventually...
There are many serious issues in China's economy. Unfortunately, there are no feasible way to avoid them considering the hyper-growth in 30 years, as far as we as a society know. If you have thoughts and ideas, please share. Call it "Monumental Ponzi"? I suggest you to do one of two things. Either do some serious study in economics and live and do business in China for a couple of years to see what it really is, if you can afford it. Or continue shedding your eyes from the world and being delusional.
I suggest you to do one of two things. Either refute the 'ponzi' argument, or keep attacking me personally :) You seem to have some anger in your life. you should resolve that first.
Any reason, you, who lives in US and making a living off American companies, would want an unlikely catastrophic event to destroy US, and hoping authoritarian billionnaire dictators in China and Russia to gain even more military power on the world?
"If I wanted to do massive, irreparable harm to China, this is the law I would pass. And yet, they have done this willingly to themselves, without hesitation or incident."
These aren't the smart engineering politicians with a 10 year view China has foisted its fable onto the world. These are the corrupt paranoid politicians who know they are one mass protest away from having all their families disposed. These are fat and lazy billionnaires who have siphoned off local schools, hospitals, people, environments, and is about to abscond with riches. These are the people that see their debt-fueled economy collapsing, and know there's no more workers to be paid in pennies to be exploited.
"In total, 106 members of China's National People's Congress and 97 members of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, are on Hurun's China Rich List. Their combined wealth hits $463.8 billion. By comparison, the median wealth of American politicians was just over $1 million in 2013, according to CNN Money. " http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-politicians-are-rich-...