This is already such a tired argument***

We're at war

Re: We're at war

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Musk isn't going to let Trump do anything that would actually hurt China

Re: Musk isn't going to let Trump do anything that would actually hurt China

quozzel

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Re: We're at war

Feb 4, 2025, 12:08 PM

Yes, we're at war with China...sort of. But they're dead. The only question is "when".

Well, that and "what?". There's plenty of options. Is it their housing market that's going to collapse? Google "Chinese ghost cities" and then go to IMAGES. They say pictures are worth a thousand words...which is impressive, because there are thousands of pictures. Those things are everywhere.

About 75% of the Chinese citizens' net worth is tied up in these things...which will never be occupied. Keep in mind our 2008 housing-market crash was caused by an excess inventory of around 5%-7%. China said: "hold our beer", and proceeded to overbuild to the tune of anywhere to 200% to 300%. Evergrande is gone. Country Garden's teetering. The government developers and even the banks are next.

Their GDP may also be inflated by as much as 60%. Satellite images strongly suggest this. Actual economic activity - be it a house, a business, a stadium, whatever - generates lights, and it's actually possible to determine a country's GDP just by counting those lights.

So why does India have more lights than China? And if China's really been systemically cooking their books by a couple percentage points a year over the last 30 years, getting to 60% overage is pretty easy. Which means their debt-to-GDP ratio, which we already know is really, really bad, is actually something closer to "Apocalyptic."

Or maybe it'll be demographics. Their demographic situation is past the point of grim, even if you buy that their population is 1.4 billion people. And it isn't. A Chinese fertility expert living in exile in Wisconsin demonstrated pretty conclusively the number was at most 1.3 billion and probably closer to 1.2, and there's new facts emerging that shows the number may be lower than that - possibly even lower than 1.0 billion. Fake birth certificates were a cottage industry in China, since provinces got paid from Beijing...based on population.

Look at pictures of their workforce. Anywhere but maybe Shenzhen, it's old. There are not a whole lot of people under the age of 50 in that country. Their birthrate has dropped to less than 0.5...not even a quarter of what they'd need just to break even.

Or maybe Xi gets frisky and decides he's going to take Taiwan. Maybe his military, unlike Russia's, isn't riddled with corruption and incompetence and he can actually pull it off. Doubtful, but rock on. But we don't even have to fight them, and we shouldn't, IMHO. Unlike Russia, which exports mass amounts of grain and energy, China imports 75% of its energy and close to half its food. And a handful of US destroyers parked anywhere between China and the Persian Gulf can cut off every bit of it.

Xi has openly stated he's basically going to try to "science" his way out of it. Unless they discover the Fountain of Youth or mass cloning, I have no idea what else might save them.

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and how they handle the value of the yuan. It basically distorts everything. Credit, money, asset prices, most of the world's economy.

There is a great analysis by Russel Napier about the collapse of the monetary "non-system" that spawned out of China's decision to devalue it's exchange rate back in 1994, which had profound effects on the rest of the world's interest rates and ability to finance growth. This non-system has been the financial architecture relied on around the world for the last thirty years, and unfortunately, nothing was ever done by world leaders to organize a better system for the future.

Now we're at the point where we are hitting that fork in the road that many observers saw was coming back in the late 90s, where based on Xi and the PBOC's impossible choices, we will likely wind up with two separate monetary systems.

Two separate monetary systems will definitely slow the world down and cause an uptick in social unrest around the planet.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/11/america-china-and-the-death-of-the-international-monetary-non-system/

spot on

Re: We're at war

We're at war

Re: We're at war

just shares

What say we give the CCP a bunch of money for a hot social media app

Re: What say we give the CCP a bunch of money for a hot social media app

Re: What say we give the CCP a bunch of money for a hot social media app

Musk isn't going to let Trump do anything that would actually hurt China

Re: Musk isn't going to let Trump do anything that would actually hurt China

Don't worry, Josh Hawley has a plan

Re: We're at war

One could argue that nothing effects our daily lives as much as the PBOC

spot on

President Musk isn't about to let anyone go for China's throat***

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