Funny to remember how widespread making fun of the “Soviet Gerontocracy” was in the 70s and 80s in western media and politics. This is so so so much worse. Suslov, Brezhnev and Chernenko at their worst and most decrepit state were monsters of vitality and intellect compared to what we are seeing from Amerikkka these days.

You can put renal failure induced encephalopathy Andropov on the debate stage 5 minutes before he died and Biden would still seem barely sentient comperatively

Chinese state taking a larger and larger role in the housing sector and various public affortable housing initiatives in various levels and models have been openly and officialy stated by the CPC as actions to be taken going forward. Most western coverages even of sales like the one we are talking about specificaly mention them being part of those policies

The government would need to spend more money, dept and productive capital and manpower to built the equivalent amount of units compared to what they buy from developers now. Also a lot of these are unfinished in various degrees too so in part jobs and construction under state hands or supervision will continue for those units for a productive end result

The amount that a real estate company gets from their particular SOE probably depends on how much of a bribe the real estate owner is able to give to the relevant government official(s), and the most likely outcome is that the real estate owner transfers some of the purchase money back to the government official (kickbacks).

The whole controlled deflation of the real estate sector and the crackdown on speculation that has soured so many upper class chinese wouldnt have been happening if corruption was still endemic at the level you are describing. Thats a view of China from 15 years ago, not now. Still a lot of corruption but not nearly enough to play a systemic role in industry and sector wide policies and trends like what you are descibing. This shows a wrapped view of current goals and competence of the Chinese state machinery that makes your other speculation about the rates they are gonna pay, how valuable these are gonna be in state hands or the financial freedom and speculative space these private companies may have going forward (tregarding the use and obligations from the money from said sales) more guesswork on shakey grounds

Prices are falling for 2+ years now but they are very careful about it being gradual and controled. De-marketizing some housing stock (paying bellow market rates per unit mind you) by absorbing them into affordable state owned public housing initiatives will also relieve inventory while facilitating demand. Increasing the share of public housing is an obvious way to control prices and kneecap speculation potential in the sector going forward. The built housing is already there so making it public is an obvious step. The barriers and regulations against speculation ,overbuilding and corruption going forward for these private entities are a whole different thing and China has been pretty strict recently during this controled deflation of the sector

Vietnam with the cinge anglophilia once again…

And i say anglophilia because this isnt really just a case of “we dislike or distrust both parties but i guess Chine less because history or SCS disputes or whatever”. There genuinely is a very positive public opinion towards the US there and US cultural hegemony seems very entranched. To score similarly to the phillippines in such a study something is really wrong with the perception of the US among the population.

They don’t seem to be anywhere near the top, at least in the last decade. Dont know if it decreased even more or not Sadly Vietnam seems to be…

Either way as for sanctions they pretty much never do that in their modern history, for better or worse. Doupt its gonna change now. At least in any overt way

wonder who is by far the world leader in solar panel&tech production and also ignores westrern sanctons on Syria

Also its beyond meaningless when you consider that at most idk 3% of the population of Xinjiang and 1% in Tibet is considering themselves to be occupied by China and are remotely likely to participate or aid in an armed struggle against the CPC, even at the best possible conditions

Like sure, Tibetians have a right to engage in an armed anti-colonial struggle or kickstart an indeginous liberation movement ok. You probably couldnt even fill an NBA stadium with those willing so what does that leave their lib free Tibet dreams. The CIA was trying to recruit and instigate an anti-chinese sessesionist movement last century and they gave up because they couldnt find enough willing Tibetians to get the project off the ground. And they had a budget of dozens and dozens of millions to pay off poor ass Tibetians and they still couldnt find any fertile sessesionist sentiment. And thats on record

China doesnt decide what EU countries to get bold with, they are responding to interest and oppeness to investing and collaboration from EU countries. They wont reject much. If Germany, Portugal or idk Italy were as or more willing then China would have the same engagment as them. Same with the ME that they work with a lot vs less so. Hungary being the less anti-China EU country or better put the EU country that tries to take a more balanced stance in the emerging multipolar world only reflects bad on the rest of the EU

To make @Kaplya@hexbear.net post bellow on Gorbachev even worse i remembered this gem of Gorby straight up selling the GDR out ,Mitterand going “bruh what the fuck are you doing, lets support Honecker?” and Gorby being so excited to push ahead with the reunification that even Thatcher being like “shouldnt we slow down a bit?”

On the eve of the famous negotiations in Arkhyz regarding the future of Germany, Gorbachev, through his assistant Chernyaev, contacted Helmut Kohl and began to lament: “I have nothing to feed the people, give three or four billion deutschmarks, and in return you will get everything you need in Arkhyz.” This phrase contains all of Gorbachev. He took loans from the West and was ready to pay for them not only with the integrity of the community of socialist countries, but also with the existence of his own country.

In addition to the negotiations between Gorbachev and Kohl in Arkhyz, in December 1989 the Soviet leader met with French President Mitterrand in Kyiv. Mitterrand invited Gorbachev to fly to Berlin together to support Honecker. Gorbachev’s reaction: “If you want to fly, fly!” But I won’t fly.” I also remember how Thatcher suggested to Gorbachev not to resolve the issue with Germany solely personally, but to create a commission on this matter that would include England, France and the USSR. Thatcher feared that as a result of Gorbachev’s unification, the western part of the country would swallow the eastern, and instead of a single German nation, there would be an “Ossie-Wessie” conflict. Gorbachev, in my presence, reacted to the Iron Lady’s proposal in this way: “I don’t want to wash the British and French’s dirty laundry, but I will support the unification of Germany.” This is how Moscow surrendered the GDR, Honecker, and all the East Germans.

I know for sure that at the negotiations in Arkhyz, Helmut Kohl asked Gorbachev whether Moscow intended to somehow help Erich Honecker, the SED and the entire socialist elite of the GDR. Kohl clearly thought that Moscow intended to help its German generals. But Gorbachev answered him: “These questions are your internal matter, and you know better how to deal with whom.”

But Gorbachev’s decision to “surrender” the GDR was not his personal one. The decision to “surrender” the GDR was suggested to him in June 1989 by George Bush, when the Gorbachev couple were in Washington. On the eve of this historical “clue,” US First Lady Barbara Bush “processed” Raisa Maksimovna “just in case.” These women worked in a well-coordinated tandem on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. In order for Gorbachev to commit another betrayal, one thing was needed: for “dear Barbara” and Raisa Maksimovna to put pressure on the painful ambitions of Mikhail Sergeevich, and he, from the consciousness of his own historical importance, swelled like a soap bubble. In such an inflated state, he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. This was both payment for the betrayal of the socialist bloc, and an advance for the already planned and agreed collapse of the USSR

Смотрите оригинал материала на сайте “Совершенно секретно” : https://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/banda-chetyryekh-i-gorbachyev/

To not put talk past each other i wanna note that the general question that policy decisions and directions depend on still stands?. How high or low is Chinese HH consumption actualy? Is it 35% or 55% ? If it isnt actually noticably lagging other developed asian or even western nations when calculated in the same manner then one can say “china must develop its consumer base” all they want but there actually be much less room to do so compared to the assumed one if HH consumption was actualy noticably weak. Its a different thing to try and bring a notably weak consumption to developed nation averages vs trying to bring a maybe somewhat bellow average consumption to gargantuan US consumerist brain levels. If the latter is needed for China to become a internal circulation and non exporter then i question the validity of such project or even its feasibility in timescales of 1-2 decades, or if it could have done something about it earlier on.

https://fddi.fudan.edu.cn/d3/ae/c19095a185262/page.htm And its not just random unnamed bloggers. Actual research in China seems to be approaching these figures again and breaking down the pocibility of underestimating Chinese HH consumption compared to other countries due to accounting and economic particularities

As for dept i dont think household borrowing has played an important role in the increase of Chinese household consumption. Also the aggregated figure may tell us absolutely nothing about how distressed the average household balance sheet is given the income and regional inequalities in China. It could very well be an upper middle class problem and for housholds and individuals who leveraged a bit too much on the property market and speculation. Those people were gonna be losers in any restructuring and deflation, controlled or not, of the property sector either way. Its less of an issue if Hh debt going up mostly as a function of mortgage penetration for higher income earners but not coming at the expense of a savings or consumption (but also not financing consumption) for the average houshold. If we want to make this argument looking at income cohort specific data is the way to go if you have them available. And its something that seems to be plateauing and even dropping either way in the last couple of years while consumption continues to grow. But Overall households seem well above water in total net wealth with healthy balance sheets.

Doesnt seem thats holding back household spending and deposits also can’t grow (along with consumption) following income and gdp gains if debt servicing is what’s eating peoples incomes.

@Kaplya@hexbear.net might be interested in this article since they often have noted that a big problem for China is its relatively weak Household consumption

https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/consumption-in-china-is-it-really-that-bad/

According to this perspective HH consumption in China is under-reported ,or more accuratly undercaclulated when comparing to numbers from other countries cause it uses different calculation methods, a soviet accountring approach that is, along with some other unique parameters tothe whole equation. And that if calculated in the same way as the HH consumption numbers of other countries China’s household consumption as a % of GDP is actualy already in line or above its developed neighbours

Another thing i found that doesnt agree that Chinese HH consuption notably underperforms is that it has tracked the growth of GDP for since the GFC. Which is what would be healthy and expected. IMF data:

So while Chinese HH consumption has room to grow and is probably weak, maybe its already performing fine-ish enough that there isnt enough room to make China an internal circulation economy by boosting domestic consumption and there isnt enough internal consumption potential to absord its manufacturing and industrial capacity. And that the CPC itself cant really boost HH consumption significantly enough even if it tried its darnest

Actualy i heard its also a result of the CPC cracking down and bustinga lot of online scamming operations recently that where quite widespread and damaging especially in more remote parts of china and opperating with ethnic chinese in neighbouring countries like Myanmar . Thousands fled through and from neighbouring countries to excape the law and the US is a natural destination. Especially if they made some money already

30%+ of Israel’s oil imports in the last couple of years have been Kurdish oil from Iraq (which includes Syrian oil thats exported to Iraqi Kurdistan from the US-SDF controlled oil fields in Syria)

It could be based if it would be anti-finance Chinese youth but Weibo is a more liberal site comperatively and im pretty sure lot of these complaints are Tier 1 City white collar ppl who saw almost no wage increase this last year are getting a bit “squeezed” with the property sector deleveraging and property values dropping (especially in tier 1 cities) and stock not performing (the horror) and just want more “free market” and liberalism. Blue collar wages and rural/tier 2 and bellow wages are performing much better and those workers feel better about some prices dropping ,have much more to gain by the property sector course correction and dont give much shit about line going down

800 million property units

First of all what classifies as a “property unit” ? 800M property units doesnt equal 800M housing units. Offices, stores, garages, hotels. Its anything really. The numbers im seeing are 400 million Housing Units in Urban ereas, less than half of the urban population, with 60 Million Empty/vaccant/mid construction, which lines up both with the vaccancy rates i mentioned and with 800M total property units. How many “housing units” does the proffessor claim there are in urban China and what is the vaccancy rate on them, and what if any chinese survey or source there is on those numbers if he actualy claims them ?

Im trying to use Chinese sources at best i can but nothing seems to agree with anything close to 800 M urban housing units at 30+% Vacancy rates . Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance has total urban vacancy rates plateuing at ~20% of 300+M housing units in 2017. More recent surveys like this point out at decreasing vaccancy rates that now sit more in line with the numbers i mentioned. This includes housing units that are vacant for more than 3 months and excludes unfinished units. The numbers should be 2-3% higher than this but still that puts it comfortably bellow 20% overall as of now.

At worst urban overbuilding doesnt seem to go above 10% of tottal units build compared to most mature economies

Why do you repeat the redditor-YT thumbnail tier “China has built enough housing for 6 billion people” thing in that comment. Its a completely unserious claim that comes from no credible source or analysis, domesticaly or abroad and is diectly contradicted by any actual numbers of Chinese construction. Its for redditors to circlejerk over in the comments when watching some demolition video of high rises in China and pretend China has ovebuild by 100% or more. Latest vacancy numbers show that residential Vacancy rates are between 7 to 23% with an average of around 13%. Higher on low tier cities and lower in Tier 1 cities. There is overbuilding but if you wanna aim at a “healthy” 5% that means that China has overbuilt by 8% and thats some dead GDP of idk a 4 trillion over a decade or whatever. But again China still has a lot room to go in urbanization rates , especially now that growth is concentrated in tier 2 and bellow cities so unless you believe that China tops out at 65% urbanization rates - of which 20% are still not even full urban hukou holders, even that overbuilding isnt as definitive in the “will never be occupied and used” territory

You make these well thought out comments and analysis but you sometimes include something so non-credibly anti-china tabloid slop that it sours the whole thing . Do you actualy believe that like of 70% of all residential buildings in China right now are empty housing or some unfinished high rises?. Be real

The USSR from the early 70s until its collapse basicaly held a pro-palestine 2 state solution position. WHat makes you think even if they survived they would have had a noticably better position than China’s

People who were not Chinese got the same progress like the Chinese did at different speeds (earlier or later).

Those who did either did it on the back of the rest of the world and by plundering and colonizing billions (west and western protectorates) with China still managed to catch up with that in half a century or they just havent yet and wont in the forseeable future (most of the third world) and their progress marely amounts to the most generalized side effects of world wide medical and tech progress. China is bringing to 1.5 billion people the progress, QoL and modernity the former group achieved (and then some) without colonizing, imperializing or impovershing any other nation or people and in 1/5th of the time.No one else did that, no one else is doing that. Other than you know, the USSR (relative to era)