It's clear now much of the Chinese leadership were a paper tiger and now that the heat is on, they don't really have a strategy. They just never expect enough people to call them out publicly and embarass them. Maybe they'll keep hold of their own country by suppressing information flow, countrywide surveillance, but whatever power they had over the global economy: severely diminished.
It looks like their debt is only 15% of their GDP? I've heard the China <> Debt thing before and I don't understand it. Could you explain what you mean?
As a result, there are lots of loans on the books that will never be paid off as things stand, and unlike the US there is no mechanism in the financial system to acknowledge any of that on a gradual basis (loan writedowns, etc), so the loans keep being rolled over instead.
At some point, reality will need to be faced, at which point there will be either massive financial system issues, much worse than what the US had going on in 2008, or huge government bailouts. And in the latter case, that implies even more financial repression or taxation, or both, than is already going on, with resulting decreases in economic well-being for urban areas in China, which is the thing that _really_ worries the CCP.
If the economy grows faster than the "bad loan" burden, then this problem is basically temporary, and rolling the loans over until the economy has grown enough to just deal with the issue is the right strategy. It's hard to come by plausibly correct (or even unbiased) estimates of either economic growth or the size of the "bad loan" burden, but almost all the estimates I've seen seem to agree that for a long time the "bad loan" burden was growing faster than the economy. Whether that's still the case, I don't know.
Unfortunately I do think this means we're going to see some action in the South China Sea region. China has problems to deal with in Hong Kong, Taiwan, North Korea, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc. Eventually one of its neighbors is going to get aspirations and will poke the bear. Hopefully China is spread too-thin to deal with it, although that will mean conflict. Violence will be necessary here.
Whatever hopes the borderline pro-China Taiwanese harbored must’ve been shattered by what is happening in Hong Kong this past year.
The true character of China has been revealed: The CCP is power-hungry and don’t feel constrained at all.
I would consider it a fight or die situation in slow motion from here on out.
Even going as far as being able to arrest foreign executives that break those sanctions.
If HN is trying to achieve a soulless takes-itself-way-too-seriously environment, then I'd agree with you. Hopefully that's not the case (but probably is, per the observations I've accumulated over the years of hanging around here).
> intellectually-stimulating conversation
Humor can be intellectually-stimulating, even in the form of clever puns. Whether or not the pun in question was clever (or at least sufficiently-clever to be amusing) is a different question.
> diverse group of people that have diverse (and sometimes opposing) viewpoints.
Humor happens to be an excellent way to both convey and consume those viewpoints, especially in a way that's actually conducive to all parties actually coming away with a better understanding of one another.
It's a housekeeping/ broken windows thing, puns and off topic one liners that exist to solicit some type of thoughtless reaction in the reader, are the first signs of a forum in decline.
> It's not that funny stuff isn't amusing, it's that it's counter to what HN might be trying to achieve.
So, keep it serious. No Having fun. Gotchya.