or it uses the temporary economic might to coerce other countries to allow them to solidify their current advantage, as the first step in empire building?
Highly unlikely because the world of Infrastructure Development Financing is a highly competitive one.
The American, EU, Australian, and Japanese funds get the best projects, and the remaining ones (mostly in LDCs) go to upstarts in the space like China, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Türkiye, Saudi, UAE, India, Qatar, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, Russia, Mexico, and Brazil.
Most OBOR projects failed because they were projects most other lenders like the ADB or WB wouldn't touch because of their risk profile.
There's a reason why when SK was in a similar position as China today in the 90s and 2000s, they went all in on investing in China and ASEAN. Hell, the Japanese did the same thing in South Korea in the 70s and 80s.
China doesn't really have a similar option. Most of the stable ASEAN members (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines) prefer Japanese, Korean, or Singaporean FDI, and the only other China-esque market for China to potentially invest in is India, which has made operating a Chinese owned subsidiary a living hell while rolling a red carpet to Japanese, French, Singaporean, Gulf (excluding Qatar), American, and Israeli investors.
Also, France, Brazil, US, UK, Italy, Türkiye, Saudi, UAE, India, Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, South Africa, and Russia all have stakes and investments all over Africa that outcompete Chinese investment (depending on the country).
So on a continental level is China the biggest investor?
That said, "European investors remain, by far, the largest holders of FDI stock in Africa, led by the United Kingdom ($60 billion), France ($54 billion) and the Netherlands ($54 billion)" [0].
China's OBOR tends to be infamous largely for it's infeasibility. It's the IDC equivalent of a subprime loan, as most OBOR projects in Africa tended to be those that larger FDI contributors decided to pass on.
There is a regional segmentation aspect as well. Africa is large and some regions saw outsized Chinese investment (DRC for example), but in other regions there was much more competition. For example, most FDI in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia) and North Africa came from Europe, Türkiye, and the Gulf States.
In the former British colonies in East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan), Indian Ocean (Seychelles, Mauritius), and Mozambique Chinese companies were directly competing with long established Indian and Pakistani conglomerates due to the centuries old existing Asian business community in the region.
In Southern Africa China would be competing with South Africa along with smaller players like India.
I can't speak for the rest of Africa, but I've seen China having a significant impact in West Africa and the DRC.
[0] - https://unctad.org/press-material/investment-flows-africa-dr...
Im in China myself, I dont see blood thirsty imperialists, plotting land grabs all around, I see an exhausted aimless populace going on in a desperate forward escape towards a childless greying future, surrounded by foreign healthcare labour, led by panicked politicians shouting meaningless patriotic slogans against the wind as the boat sink further and further
My wife, whom I tried to discourage from buying property, entered negative equity on her 40-year studio mortgage she s not allowed to rent out as half her family already emigrated to the UK to reconvert from high paid service jobs to low paid blue collar jobs because at least there they can raise kids.
I dont get why americans are scared of us: we're just as scared of them. It's not going well here.
Because your government keep threatening to start a war in the Pacific over Taiwan and no one is taking those threats lightly.
Of far greater concern is their increasing belligerence in their "sphere of influence" including the south china sea and surrounding island chains.
There's 100km of sea between Taiwan and China. Not China (nor anyone else) has anything close to the blue water amphibious assault fleet it would take for an effective invasion force to cross it. It would take multiple years to build such a fleet, impossible to hide, and while they built it Taiwan and her allies would assemble the world's largest anti-shipping missile arsenal. I don't want to sound flippant, but I doubt a single ship would make it to within 10km of Taiwan.
Or forget amphibious assault, say China tries to go airborne. An even longer period unmistakably building an unprecedented heavy cargo aircraft fleet. An even longer period for Taiwan and her allies to build her already impressive air defences into an impregnable shield. Again, not a single aircraft makes it even over Taiwan's territorial waters.
The Russian experience has actually been eye-opening, but not in the direction you assumed. Developments in missile technology have totally changed the game. Even today, the vastly superior Russian air force cannot fly over ukrainian territory. The Black Sea Fleet has been driven away - and Ukraine does not even have a navy! And even given their massive advantages in size and military strength, it's far from clear that Russia will prevail - far from it.
No, you can't really compare the two. Russia could always have invaded any of their neighbours if they decided to. China literally can't invade Taiwan, not if you assume even the most basic preparation and competence of herself and her allies. The best they could do is a blockade, and hope for capitulation.
All of this in my own non-professional opinion of course, but I'm not completely uneducated on the topic. There's more - far more - information laying things out much better than I ever could, I encourage anyone overly concerned about an imminent war over Taiwan to seek it out.
It seems missiles don’t solve all the things else there would be an “invasion” on going for 600+ days.
I guess war is harder than Internet comments.
The crosshairs are up because China has made threats and become a threat to world peace.
The United States turns the weak into allies, and it's allies into enemies. We gave Russia $180 billion in today's currency after WWII. After the collapse of the USSR, the US was the one to welcome Russia into the World bank and IMF. After 2001, Russia was widely considered our closest strategic partner in the war on terror. [1] Now our reckless expansion of NATO has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians.
We practically created the Taliban and ISIS, or at least gave them the tools and circumstance to be lethally effective. We created the circumstance for the Iranian revolution, the Cuban revolution, countless others that have hurt us since.
Of course we embraced China, we're a python looking to smother them.
Ukraine couldn't have joined NATO as long as it was in a civil war anyway. I'm pretty sure most non Ex-Varsovie-pact NATO nations would've voted against anyway (sweet Russian gas).
This was a war decided by Putin because he could do it.
See Washington Post 2004 [2], and leaks of the Nuland transcript in 2014 [3]. They tell the same story. The U.S. has potentially always intended to renege on our stance at the end (pause?) of the Cold War.[4] Even if agree that the U.S. never promised to enlarge NATO, Putin's repeated warnings that he views U.S. adventurism in Ukraine as a provocation were clear. Personally I see the rationality of his stance. [5]
Putin is reacting the the same way Biden would if China moved nukes to Cuba. Those are the stakes our interference in Ukraine threatens in his view. No wonder Russia is spending hundreds of thousands of lives to forestall it.
This statement from Yanukovych upon his resignation is telling:
On 14 February, Yanukovych had said: "I want to say that I was incited, and I'm incited to use various methods and ways how to settle the situation, but I want to say I don't want to be at war. I don't want any decisions made using such a radical way." He called on all politicians to refrain from radicalism and to understand that "there is a line that shouldn't be crossed, and this line is law".[6] A statement made in regard to his circumstances but I wonder if his government hadn't fallen, would Ukraine would be at war now.
Ultimately I do not justify or condone Putin's invasion. Neither do I justify or condone the U.S.'s involvement in Ukraine post USSR. Insofar as we are arguing about root causes to the war, the 2021 international environment seems to rival the national entanglements that precipitated WWI. Blaming Putin or NATO totally is both too much and too little.
[1] https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/russia-s-ukraine...
[2] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/meddling-in-ukraine...
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[4] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russi...
[5] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-e...
Agreed. I'm not pro-CCP in any way, shape, or form, but the rhetoric and jingoism coming from politicians in both the US and China is stupid, and will end up causing an accidental escalation. Look at the whole balloon fiasco. Relations really need to normalize or the world is in a world of hurt.
I also blame a lack of English and Mandarin fluency in China and US respectively for causing this issue. The average Chinese or American doesn't get a chance to see life on the other side, so people end up building orientalized images.
Also, ime on the Hill, most of the people making China policy weren't Asian American nor had strong experience with Chinese (or Asian in general) culture on the ground. A lot of this was due to imo discriminatory hiring practices that prevented people with "ties" to a specific region from becoming a specialist for that area.
The CCP just aren’t very nice people.
US politicians are taking advantage of the situation to score populist points at home - but their caution towards China isn’t totally unwarranted.
After 2008, most news bureaus shut down their foreign offices, and whoever is left tends to stay within a bubble around the main bureau in that country, while sourcing news from freelancers.
In addition, when you can't see or understand social media in another language and on an entirely different ecosystem of platforms, you end up getting a warped view of the world.
when the CCP arrests people for reporting things they dont like, it's no wonder foreign journalists don't want to go there.
Your comment also exemplifies the sort of Berlin wall of cultural exchange between the two countries. You refer to the CCP as this sort of opaque not so nice organization but in fact the political system of the two nations are not so different if viewed as a whole system rather than the superficial parts. Sure China has one party with overreaching power over industry and corporations. But when you see the US system as a whole it’s not too different with corporations controlling both parties (you’ll see they often contribute to both Democrats and Republicans). One party, controlling corporations vs corporations controlling both parties. Not much difference in the end.
A lot in the west sort of just have a vague understanding of the workings of Chinese politics, and even less about the day to day life and well being of an average Chinese person. This is mostly due to the fault of China though, limiting cultural exports and making it difficult to get tourism visas for westerners. I’m not sure what that’s about. Chinese have a better understanding of foreign life but probably still a bit lacking in terms of understanding foreign politics. And even though there are a lot of overseas Chinese there’s just way more Chinese people who don’t know about the west apart from pop culture just because there are billions of Chinese (raw numbers).
I doubt the lack of English and Mandarin fluency is a big factor here. The CCP made a deliberate choice to isolate China from the outside world as much as possible.
WhatsApp and FB used to be popular for a hot second (and still were in Xinjiang and Tibet until crackdowns in 2016-18), and it used to be easy for non-Chinese nationals to join WeChat or SinaQQ until 2017-19, yet most American commentators wouldn't go on there to get a feel of discourse on the other side, or go to a Tier 2/3/4 city, while Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese tourists, journalists, and businesspeople would.
People forget that most Asian Americans would could bridge the gap tend to be on the younger end (10s-30s) but most decision makers are in their 60s-70s. It's the same issue across the Pacific in China as well.
Most of the world, not just Americans, are scared of the Chinese governments' utmost focus on nationalism and military in the last 2 years, in exchange for economic stability. At its ability to build warships at 20 to 40 times faster than United States. At its ability to reinforce Russian military and its war against a nascent democracy in Europe.
And you see, some of the world are annoyed that the Chinese, despite 1.2B large, cannot take down a mere 100M CCP party members - members that have brazenly started to oppress people like yourself with each passing day. Zeroing out your bank account. Saddle you with fines and bogus taxes. Murdered your reform hero Li Keqiang last week and kept you quiet.
Here in the west we obviously have low birth rates too, having to do with erosion of gender roles and family values and woke excuses like "it's bad for the environment." I don't imagine those factors to be in play in China - what is?
I think you will find that rural areas of china has a higher birth rate than urban areas, as the opportunities in rural areas are fewer. But as more and more people move to urban areas for economic prosperity, the same birthrate will befall them just like in western advanced economies.
Try giving every couple in America a 5x raise and a free house and watch a ton of kids be born the next five years.
Your argument is similar to saying "no one buys houses anymore because everyone is obsessed with tiny houses and van dwelling". No, they are obsessed with these things because it's the only thing they have any chance of affording.
If you split up the wealth concentrated in the top 1%, so we have an economy more like the 1950s, every family is about 2.5 million dollars richer. That's a house, only one spouse working, maybe a vacation house, two cars, and several kids.
Instead we have people living with roommates and parents trying to save enough money just to survive.
This nonsense that no one is having kids because of "family values" and "morals" is billionaire propaganda to distract everyone from the fact that they took all our money, and we need unions to get it back. Not more church, not getting rid of woke (whatever that means).
Unions, we need unions and strong labor protections to get our money back from the billionaires who took it inch by inch for the last 70 years. [1]
Math now corrected, I still want my extra 1.2 million back.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
If what you are saying was true, rich families would have more kids than poor families in the US and the opposite is true.
The families that had 5/7 kids a hundred years ago were objectively way poorer than the “I can’t afford a kid” crowd today.
If you're a poor, 2 person household in a city, you have two main choices (all other choices means leaving the city you live in) :
- Work and stay poor, but comfortable enough. This means maybe getting enough money on the side to buy a big appartement then start a family at 40-45 yo (20 years ago you had the same choice, except the age was 30-35. It's worst in more expensive cities).
- Try to get on welfare and have kids asap. You'll have to live in a worse area, with less disposable income, you'll be a bit hungry sometimes, but it might be worth it. If you have family/support system in the area whose reputation can protect you from the worse, it's all good (hence 2nd and 3rd gen immigrants have more opportunities to make this choice, as their support system is often stronger than 5th-Xth gen immigrants or native Americans).
Do you have kids yourself? Are you a low-income worker? How much do you have each months after paying rent+utilities+food? Because I remember clearly my parents earning less than that cost, and trying to do calculations to avoid downgrading to a smaller house. They couldn't avoid it and I shared a room with my brother until I was 16, when I joined a 'boarding school' (closest translation I could find, but it was public, free and not at all like Anglo boarding schools).
Not true at all. Please see this data[1] for birth rate by income level (US, 2019)
Lowest income women give 40% more births than the richest women.
The relationship is consistent across income levels. The more you make the fewer kids you have.
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
----
It's also important to consider the pollution. Acid rain, thick soot smog, polluted city water wells, and unbelievably poor food prep/regulation are all commonplace. This has impacted fertility rates across the board, but especially in females.
The Chinese population is roughly 1.2:1 male to female, under the current 3-child policy enacted ~2016.
surprising if true
How is that? China has overly concentrated wealth, basically?
The HDI of the poorest region of Thailand (Northeast Thailand/Isan) is 0.780. The only provinces in Mainland China that have a comparable HDI are Zhejiang, Liaoang, Guangdong, and Jiangsu. Every other province of China has a lower HDI than the poorest province of Thailand. The only provinces in China that can match Thailand's HDI are Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Guangdong yet still lag behind Bangkok region.
The average life expectancy in China still lags by 1-2 years compared to Thailand.
The median income in Thailand is around $7,000 [0] versus around $4,000 [1] in China
> How is that? China has overly concentrated wealth, basically?
Kinda. The Chinese development story is amazing. China basically went from undeveloped in 1990 to middle income by 2020. In 1 generation that is an amazing transformation. Yet, the low hanging fruits of reform and development have largely been harvested.
Now comes the hard part - building a welfare system, reforming business and taxation law, tamping down on corruption, investing in human capital.
Thailand, South Korea, and Malaysia were all in a similar position in the 1990s during the Asian Financial Boom (caused by Japan's stagflation) and the subsequent Crash. South Korea was able to develop by working on the hard part above for a generation, but internal poltical strife in Thailand and Malaysia caused them both to fall behind their peer.
It takes around 2-3 generations to actually go from undeveloped to developed. Some countries can do it in 1.5-2 generations, but then they are still stuck with jurisdictional bad practices (SK, Israel, and Poland are notable examples).
[0] - http://statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/th/08.aspx
[1] - http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t2022011...
Heterogeneity is and perhaps will always be a thing for China, and part of the question is if the poor parts have any low hanging fruit left to mimic the success of the earlier-developed and now high HDI areas, or have those fruit withered by now.
I left Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin out due to the fact that they are governed differently than provinces, as they are under direct administration of the State Council and they are almost 100% urban. This makes them a bad comparison with Thailand as a whole. At a micro level, it might be interesting to compare BKK versus Beijing/Shanghai/Tianjin but Thailand allows free movement and domiciling, so it's not a great comparison.
> the question is if the poor parts have any low hanging fruit left to mimic the success of the earlier-developed and now high HDI areas, or have those fruit withered by now
It's a tough question and depends province to province. The provinces around Manchuria are probably all tapped out, but there might be some opportunity left in Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangxi, but local and mid-level governance in China (like other middle income countries) sucks.
I have written a lot about this in a previous life, but I'd rather not write a whole Econometrics white paper on HN
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/16/523632920/...
This can be seen first hand with Beijing+Tianjin versus Hebei.
Those 2 cities were under direct State Council control so it was easier to push economic reforms versus a largely rural province like Hebei, plus they were close enough that it made sense for anyone half ambitious in Hebei to leave for the big city than to stay back.
This is what happened in NY State as well with NYC and IL with Chicago. It's called primacy effect in economics.
The issue is, research into stuff like this and converting it into actionable policy is becoming difficult, as mid and lower level civil servants don't want to deviate from a literal definition of policies or their mandate as administrations have become much more vindictive due to the economic slowdown. Research like this ends up stepping on people's toes.
http://www.kjjb.org/EN/abstract/abstract18771.shtml
http://www.progressingeography.com/EN/10.18306/dlkxjz.2019.0...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187705092...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02648...
Thailand is not exactly a free place, but the political leadership isn't using economic growth reason for their continued existence and then setting annual targets for every province and city.
But what probably really makes up the difference is the purchasing power parity[3]. If I'm reading that right, Thailand has a PPP of 3x China. That will more than make up for any noise in GDP, population numbers, or GINI coefficients.
[1]: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/07/17/is-gdp-still-a-useful... [2]: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/s... [3]:
Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.
> However, the Chinese GDP number is widely known to be inflated
And BIS (Bank of International settlements) notes [2] "There are studies that contradict these results and find that the official data is roughly correct and may even understate the "true" economic growth (e.g. Holz, 2006a, 2006b; Clark et al., 2017a, 2017b; Perkins and Rawski, 2008)."
GDP is just one number that is inaccurate everywhere, it's more of a 'pulse'.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... [2] https://www.bis.org/publ/work925.htm
> Where are you getting this? I'm no economist, but based on a simple search and data from wikipedia [1], your number seems wildly incorrect.
Ah jeez https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP?locations=TH... is what I was using but I'm by no means competent in this. Was supposed to be citatation 3 but fell off it seems.
They are productivity metrics (as in how much shit can country X produce versus country Y). Per Capita literally means total population, so GDP Per Capita is (Total Production in USD) / (Total Population).
Yet we all know there is no society in the world where every man, woman, and child earns the same exact amount of money.
Use a mix of Gini coefficient, median income, health indicators, education indicators, etc to track development.
We'll probably see something similar to the late 80s and early 90s when foreign assets owned by Japanese companies and funds were sold off to better balance their sheets.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-18/scotiaban...