Chinese Economics Thread

manqiangrexue

Brigadier
The growth of billionaires is a problem for two main reasons:

1. Such concentration of wealth is a very inefficient allocation of national resources. The hyper-wealthy simply do not spend enough of their money to turn the wheels of society. The golden age of western societies corresponded with periods of high taxation and redistribution of wealth driving demand from the middle class.
I would like to see a source for this. The hyper-wealthy may not spend as much money on food and shelter as a percentage of their wealth but they invest massive amounts of wealth into innovation and spur further economic growth. They certainly don't hoard wealth and have money just sitting there collecting dust.
2. It is a political challenge to the authority of the CCP, and more broadly to any form of government that seeks to employ rational intelligence in service of a broadly construed national interest. Wealth is power, and those with wealth will seek to use that wealth to advance their own interests which do not necessarily correspond with those of broader society. See the Wall Street plot to overthrow the American government in the 1920s.
Well, that is more a problem of governmental structure than it is of wealth accumulation. Keeping the people poor so they cannot challenge your authority is putting a massive handicap on your private innovation capability. Rather, China's system has so far been very effective at making itself clear that your wealth is dependent on your allegiance with the government and the national interest.
 

foofy

Junior Member
Registered Member
How many such schools are built by billionaires? How many are built by the state? I am sure there are a few kind-hearted billionaires, but capitalists as a class are greedy. The Chinese government should and can build much more such schools, if they tax all the billionaires properly.
I don't have the exact figure. But I will give u few examples.

Pingduoduo ceo donated 100 miilions to zhejiang University.

黄峥捐赠1亿美金 隐秘低调的浙大校友与浙大教育基金

Westlake University received 100 millions donation from tencent ceo etc...
仅次清北、2018年获捐近7亿!西湖大学办学模式能否复制?
 

sinophilia

Junior Member
Registered Member
India has many billionaires, you know how well India is doing.

Billionaires do not manufacture and do develop technology, workers and scientists do. We don't even need them to invest, the state can do that.

The wonderful military advance we are witnessing today are all come from the government, the scientists and workers of China, not billionaires.

The billionaires in India come from a country with a $2 trillion annual GDP where a few family dynasties control the handful of industries and service companies that dominate the country.

In China you are talking about a $25 trillion internal economy ($15 trillion by nominal market value) with a socialist market philosophy where SOEs dominate the highest value landscape, yet Chinese people have turned some of the small and medium-sized business, mostly in non-strategic sectors like real estate, fashion, and basic consumer goods, into national (and soon international) enterprises. And yes, they kept some of that money for themselves.

Yet, there is no country in the history of mankind which has held so much wealth in its governments hands. Chinese SOEs alone hold 1/4th of all of Humanity's assets. And yet somehow some Chinese with some gumption have created wealth for themselves too at the level of the American billionaires (which are the stand-in for their lack of federally owned mega-corporations). This should be lauded, not insulted. You guys are confusing two notions. Let me give a radical example:

Imagine a country exactly like China, but with a population of 1.4 trillion people (just China x1000). Suspend disbelief for one moment and imagine that it is exactly like China in every other way. That country would have a nominal GDP of $15 quadrillion (or $25 quadrillion adjusting for PPP) but with the exact same standard of living. Simply by virtue of the amount of money and resources flowing through the system, even when China was poorer than India in 1990 you would have had Chinese individuals in 1990 with greater wealth than ALL OF INDIA. The total wealth of Chinese people would have surpassed America probably by the first two years of reforms by Deng Xiaoping in 1980.

I know this example is not realistic as Earth's resources would be exhausted before a country with 1.4 trillion people could have a standard of living even at the level of an India, much less China, but it wasn't meant to be realistic. But I have no doubt that China as a virtue of it's size will have more billionaires than the rest of the world combined. As long as the percentage of wealth that these people hold is always watched, and more importantly as long as they are always covertly checked for their contributions to society and whether they are benefiting the nation and its people, then these stand-out geniuses will be a huge net benefit to society.
 

foofy

Junior Member
Registered Member
The billionaires in India come from a country with a $2 trillion annual GDP where a few family dynasties control the handful of industries and service companies that dominate the country.

In China you are talking about a $25 trillion internal economy ($15 trillion by nominal market value) with a socialist market philosophy where SOEs dominate the highest value landscape, yet Chinese people have turned some of the small and medium-sized business, mostly in non-strategic sectors like real estate, fashion, and basic consumer goods, into national (and soon international) enterprises. And yes, they kept some of that money for themselves.

Yet, there is no country in the history of mankind which has held so much wealth in its governments hands. Chinese SOEs alone hold 1/4th of all of Humanity's assets. And yet somehow some Chinese with some gumption have created wealth for themselves too at the level of the American billionaires (which are the stand-in for their lack of federally owned mega-corporations). This should be lauded, not insulted. You guys are confusing two notions. Let me give a radical example:

Imagine a country exactly like China, but with a population of 1.4 trillion people (just China x1000). Suspend disbelief for one moment and imagine that it is exactly like China in every other way. That country would have a nominal GDP of $15 quadrillion (or $25 quadrillion adjusting for PPP) but with the exact same standard of living. Simply by virtue of the amount of money and resources flowing through the system, even when China was poorer than India in 1990 you would have had Chinese individuals in 1990 with greater wealth than ALL OF INDIA. The total wealth of Chinese people would have surpassed America probably by the first two years of reforms by Deng Xiaoping in 1980.

I know this example is not realistic as Earth's resources would be exhausted before a country with 1.4 trillion people could have a standard of living even at the level of an India, much less China, but it wasn't meant to be realistic. But I have no doubt that China as a virtue of it's size will have more billionaires than the rest of the world combined. As long as the percentage of wealth that these people hold is always watched, and more importantly as long as they are always covertly checked for their contributions to society and whether they are benefiting the nation and its people, then these stand-out geniuses will be a huge net benefit to society.
Yes. Chinese is one of the most entrepreneur and industrial race on earth
 

2handedswordsman

Junior Member
Registered Member
would like to see a source for this

Man seriously are you kidding us? Take Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Trump and countless other names. Simply, billionaires and in fact anyone who has employees, extracts value from their work to make profits. Thats the cause he invests. If he didn't collect profits there is no reason to built a company or else. Thats the stracture of capitalism. And this is the basic problem of the mathematics of capitalism. The value of the wealth produced, is being haircutted and stored in billionaires pockets, then they reinvest a fracture of. This creates a death spiral that "economists" trying to solve with magic tricks like borrowing matter from the future. Such metaphysical nosense. This is the laughable system you are fan of. Lets get one step further. If PRC hadn't induced strict regulations in the stock market, we would probably face the same situation with Wall Street, were billionaires getting richer and richer in a stagnating economy, without investing a cent in the economy. Who wants to have the anxieties and struggle of managing a huge company to make profits while you can sit in you luxury villa and enjoy profits from stocks? Thats why financial capitalism prevailed to industrial. It's more easier...way to steal wealth from workers :p. You can also observe that PRC rules forbids storing money out of the country. And at BRI involves SOE's. You are smart, you can figure out why; Capital has not a motherland. It goes were the profit is. So be careful of your wishes if you don't want PRC smashing down into pieces like USSR. An other worrying fact is that 1/3 of the private bussiness owners in PRC are members of CPC. This indicates two contradictionary things. Either is a new, high level of democracy occuring in PRC or, the system is rotting from inside. Let's wait and see
 

sinophilia

Junior Member
Registered Member
Man seriously are you kidding us? Take Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Trump and countless other names. Simply, billionaires and in fact anyone who has employees, extracts value from their work to make profits. Thats the cause he invests. If he didn't collect profits there is no reason to built a company or else. Thats the stracture of capitalism. And this is the basic problem of the mathematics of capitalism. The value of the wealth produced, is being haircutted and stored in billionaires pockets, then they reinvest a fracture of. This creates a death spiral that "economists" trying to solve with magic tricks like borrowing matter from the future. Such metaphysical nosense. This is the laughable system you are fan of. Lets get one step further. If PRC hadn't induced strict regulations in the stock market, we would probably face the same situation with Wall Street, were billionaires getting richer and richer in a stagnating economy, without investing a cent in the economy. Who wants to have the anxieties and struggle of managing a huge company to make profits while you can sit in you luxury villa and enjoy profits from stocks? Thats why financial capitalism prevailed to industrial. It's more easier...way to steal wealth from workers :p. You can also observe that PRC rules forbids storing money out of the country. And at BRI involves SOE's. You are smart, you can figure out why; Capital has not a motherland. It goes were the profit is. So be careful of your wishes if you don't want PRC smashing down into pieces like USSR. An other worrying fact is that 1/3 of the private bussiness owners in PRC are members of CPC. This indicates two contradictionary things. Either is a new, high level of democracy occuring in PRC or, the system is rotting from inside. Let's wait and see

There is a role for the state. It is important and necessary. We see the issues America is in today, completely neutered from using it’s wealth and power to stand up to China even when its trying its best, and it emboldens us to know we were right all along. The state shall always hold the nations’ future in trust for us all. Not American billionaires. Not Jewish lobbyists. Not Arab oil sheikhs. Not woke globohomos.

But be wary of complacency. There is also a role for the entrepreneur, the innovator, the creator of wealth through the invention of technology that never existed before they thought it into existence. And what way to incentivize him then to tell him he is allowed to be rewarded for his creation.

Greed may not be good, but it’s in our genes. We are animals chasing our gain even if it comes at the disadvantage of others. No religion nor philosophy, Taoist or Christian, Confucian or Hindu, Islamist or Buddhist, can veil our eyes from this truth.

Allowing us to unleash our primitive desire, to chase wealth and power and women, and all the glory and adoration that may come with it, gives us our main motivation to take massive financial and personal risk.

And sometimes those financial and personal risks taken upon by an individual, at no cost to the state or its people, give you an Edison or a Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos, and with them their reward: tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars, that surely could do more to alleviate suffering in the hands of the poor and the sick, since at some point even those men begin to grow old, and bored, and hoard their wealth or change their interests. But what happens when you confiscate their wealth? When you tell people their reward for risking livelihood and reputation is simply the gratitude of a grateful nation? Perhaps at best a limited return on investment that has been prejudged and approved by some bureaucrat? And your invention or your creation is no longer yours to control? Or it’s wealth is no longer yours to use? Not for you or your family. Or for use in the ultimate idea you set out to put into reality, which you thought about from the first days of wondrous innocence in your garage or your classroom.

No, you take away a mans primary motivation for success; power, money, fame, women, validation... and there is no longer that incentive to risk life and limb for what is ultimately the greatest source of innovation, technological advancement, and wealth creation in human history.

Sure, there will still be some who risk bankruptcy for the belief that they are creating happiness for others, their nation, or their species, or their religion, even at no reward to themselves. How many though? How many people do you really think will be left to take the crazy risks the state dare not and cannot take on behalf of the people?

Maybe you really believe people like Elon Musk would have still be around doing what they did, sleeping on their friends couch because they couldn’t afford to pay the rent since all their money was in a silly ass rocket and electric car company that no one respected; that they’d still take risks like that, literally risking being homeless, even with the knowledge that the best reward that could be hoped for would be gratitude, or your money doubled, or maybe a thank you note from his local government agency.

But I disagree. I don’t think you’ll have people creating the kinds of technologies that have been produced in the capitalist world in your new Utopian Communist state. World history is littered with these experiments. They all went poorly. But of course we are always told, those experiments don’t count. The Soviet Union will do it better. Cuba will do it better. Now, China will do it better. It’s a dangerous path. Afghanistan isn’t the graveyard of empires. Communism is. There’s a reason the CCP only gives token appreciation to the policies of those regimes or its own early history. It knows just as much as any learned man that what I’ve said is true. If it didn’t, there wouldn’t be so many billionaires in China right now allowed to flourish - there’s at at least as many billionaires in China as in the US! It could easily seize all of their funds right now, today, if it wanted to. Yet the CCP does not. They know.
 
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