I think Michael Pettis is probably worth quoting here : "In most economies, GDP growth is a measure of economic output generated by the performance of the underlying economy. In China, however, Beijing sets annual GDP growth targets it expects to meet. Turning GDP growth into an economic input, rather than an output, radically changes its meaning and interpretation."

See http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/75355

I’m no economist, but I think the point is that they’re collecting debt at a high rate too. If they continue to grow faster than that debt, all is well. Once their growth starts to revert to the G20 mean, they’ll need to change their strategies dramatically.

But I’m not an economist.

Yes, the debt needs to be used productively. Otherwise you borrow to build things that do not generate enough return to pay back the debt.

You also inflate asset bubbles, some Chinese property is as expensive as Silicon Valley or NYC, per square foot.

I don't think anybody believes their growth figures any more.

I don't believe anyone's figure. I believe my eyes, and I see Made-in-China everywhere. I see US is freaking out and waging trade war.

I don't know what their "real" gdp growth was, but the larger point is that GDP growth occurred because of an even larger increase in debt. That debt likely went to wasteful/non-productive projects. That isn't healthy or sustainable.

> China exceeded their economic growth target for 2018 in April when their economy hit 6.8% growth

Wrong. Fake GDP. It's estimated that 1/3 of their GDP is wasteful government spending. Many of their provinces also have confessed to 20-30% fake GDP, thus another 1/3 of their gdp is fake. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-19/this-is-h... https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/new-study-shin... so we're looking at maybe 1-2% gdp growth, and maybe their GDP is only about 70% of what they claim (9T vs 13T)

> Their wages are steadily increasing.

Wrong. Chinese graduates salaries have fallen for second year in a row. https://www.ft.com/content/fb5865e4-4993-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af....

> Their internal market is the healthiest of any g20 economy

Wrong. Consumer spending growth declined. https://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+spending+down&rlz=1C... . Beijing rent increased 25% !!! in july year over year. That's not a healthy sign of any economy. https://www.ft.com/content/6324fc2a-a445-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff... . and now we know Chinese consumers are taking on too much personal debt https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-15/chinese-c...

And did you forget China is about to be hit with tariffs from US on 200B worth, soon to be 500B? when their economy is export oriented?

> Investments both internally and internationally are up

Wrong. Yuan has lost 12% this year. Chinese stock market has crashed 30% this year. That's not a sign of increasing FDI. that's FDI leaving and screaming

> On top of that they haven’t touched retirement age

Wrong. Chinese demographics looks horrible, and will reach peak in 2025. Their population will shrink 1/3 in the next 60 years.

Please don't use HN primarily for nationalistic or ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, as the guidelines say: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I'm usually 100% in agreement when you chastise inappropriate behavior on HN, but this parent comment, with links to supporting evidence, was extremely informative to me -- even moreso than GP. How is such a reply nationalistic? Ideological?

(Though I acknowledge that it's a newish account... So I put much more credibility on the linked content. Anyway, you deal with this BS way more than anyone else, so major hat tip to you regardless - keep up the good work!)

It's been a while since I posted a longer explanation of what we're doing when we do this, so maybe one would be helpful.

The core issue is the word primarily. It's one thing to occasionally comment on the politicized topics that naturally come up on HN. That's what most users do and it's fine. But there's a different class of account that exists primarily to do this, pushing a political or ideological or national agenda. That is what we don't allow, as the site guidelines are careful to say. We have to draw a line somewhere, in order to prevent flamewars from taking over HN entirely, and experience has shown this 'primarily' test to be the best place to draw it.

The reason we draw the line this way is that there is a bimodal distribution of accounts and the two categories behave differently. People in the first group are motivated by intellectual curiosity, so post on a wide range of things and tend to post curious, factual, open-minded comments. People in the second group are fighting a war. That destroys the curiosity HN exists for. Indeed, that's the first thing it destroys, because the point of political battle is not to curiously meander, but to blast enemies. This site is for curious meandering.

This second type of account often comes armed with pre-existing talking points and links, which can look like contributing to good conversation, and sometimes add good information. But their fixation on an agenda and the intensity with which they seek to destroy other views instead of—let's say—dance with them, make their cumulative effect on HN not just negative but toxic.

Figuring out how to moderate this kind of thing without excluding politics altogether (which is undesirable and impossible anyway) is a challenge, and the observable difference between these two kinds of account turns out to be a useful heuristic. So when we notice an account that shows the telltale signs of being agenda-driven and guideline-breaking, we ask them not to do it. We try to explain why, and we ban them if they don't change.

There's an aspect of this that isn't publicly visible. It's not uncommon for people we've banned for abusing HN in this manner to create new accounts to continue doing it. So sometimes, when we bring this issue up with a new user, we're looking at more of a track record than might appear.

None of the above implies that an account is wrong in its views or that the topic at issue is unimportant. On the contrary, it's almost always very important and legitimately intense. That's actually why we have to moderate these forces on the site-in the literal sense of 'moderate'. Otherwise they would dominate everything, which would turn HN into a very different kind of forum. It would also quickly kill it as a place for thoughtful conversation.

More on this at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Amazing response, dang. Thank you so much for the explanation.

Following this line of thinking, all or even more than all US GDP "growth" is attributable to wasteful medical and educational inflation.

Not all, but a good chunk. Definitely less than half. Somewhere around 18% of current US GDP is healthcare spending [1], growing at around 5% year over year. Education spending is somewhere around 5% of GDP [2]. It's hard to figure out how much actual growth is occurring there since most of the ridiculous increases have been specifically in college, not in K-12 which is the bigger share. Total increase seems to be somewhere below 3% year over year growth. We can even add in military spending and not get to half. Thanks to this year's absurd 9% budget increase [3], military spending is now above 4% of GDP again.

So, healthcare + education + military accounts for around 27% of GDP and about 5.2% weighted average growth for that 27%. US GDP is up 4.2% annualized for Q2 this year, so that growth in our 3 categories is only accounting for maybe a third of total GDP growth.

[1] https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2017/02/16/spending-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/u-s-m...

The Q2 4.2% is too convenient a number to make your point. On average US GDP growth has been around 2% over the last decade: http://www.multpl.com/us-real-gdp-growth-rate/table/by-year

And before that it was a consistent 3-4% average. Picking the decade following the largest recession in history as your base is also a bit convenient.

Why government spending is neccesarily wasteful? I would say consumption of financial services part of GDP which is massive in us is less relevant to layman that vital services government provides

Ever heard of Chinese ghost cities? Completely designed and built cities that could home millions but only hold a thousand or so? That's wasteful government spending.

https://www.businessinsider.com/these-chinese-cities-are-gho...

some of the spending just saw on my trip was mind blowing. Acres of granite pavers and timber decking in new parks. Huge new city walls in place of ancient ones. (protecting them they call it)