Article

2011-05-30 China-Japan-Koreas

This is a city built for a million people - but no one lives here ...

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Posted by Mike Ramsey 2011-05-30 10:31|| || Front Page|| [11127 views ] Top

#1 Modern China is like a great freight train storming up a long, steep slope with no summit in sight, all its locomotives straining. It cannot slow or stop. The brakes would never hold. If it pauses for a second, it will start to roll back towards disaster. The whole world would be shaken by the crash that followed.

A friend challenged me on the conventional wisdom that China will become a military threat by 2040. He laughed and pointed me to this article and said history has passed judgement twice on Communist vs. Democratic systems as a route to power. He stated that China is in some serious sh..., ah, stuff.

Posted by Mike Ramsey 2011-05-30 11:21|| 2011-05-30 11:21|| Front Page Top

#2 ...candidate evacuation point above the tsunami splash inside a terra-formed mountain ring perimeter?

Posted by Skidmark 2011-05-30 13:36|| 2011-05-30 13:36|| Front Page Top

#3 Communist vs. Democratic systems

It's Command vs Capitalist economies that determine national growth and wealth. At this time, China is much more capitalist internally and mercantile externally than America. That's why they have $2 trillion of your money in the bank and can afford an empty city for 1 million. Socialist America can't even afford Detroit.

Federal Regulations Cost $1.75 trillion per year

Posted by Zebulon Thranter9685 2011-05-30 14:06|| 2011-05-30 14:06|| Front Page Top

#4 Video - Ghost Cities in China. Examples in glass and steel of why command economies do not work.

Posted by CincinnatusChili 2011-05-30 16:54|| 2011-05-30 16:54|| Front Page Top

#5 The great cities of the world grew because something stoked the process first. We're talking basics here. You'd think someone would have at least played one of the City Building sims before even starting this. Heck, there's even one for China.

Posted by Procopius2k 2011-05-30 18:18|| 2011-05-30 18:18|| Front Page Top

#6 There was something about this on the television when I woke up this morning. They were saying that the empty city they showed was built and bought by speculative betting on the real estate boom, the new city being only fifteen kilometers from the old one. So at least some of China's ghost cities are the result of capitalism run amok, when aided by too easy money -- as it sometimes will do -- not poor government planning as such.

Posted by trailing wife 2011-05-30 20:00|| 2011-05-30 20:00|| Front Page Top

#7 tw: Keep in mind, there's still a great deal of planning in the Chinese economy; basically, loans as loans per se are often a fictional entity; the government decides which loans are given, and which loans actually have to be paid back. It's a way of doing central planning within a nominally "capitalist" framework. And since they get the money in the first place by increasing their equivalents to M1 and M2, they're basically printing money. Which is the same thing as a tax on anyone who's holding cash.

So the effect's the same as if they were taxing people and handing out money to favored industries, except they don't have to explain anything to the countries they're exporting to.

But wait, there's more!

In order to get out of the Inflation Tax, people wind up investing in tangible assets... like... what Lucy Van Pelt always wants for X-mas, but never gets... Real Estate.

So with a country of 1.mumble billion people, where 500 million of them are literally living in congested apartments, the big question is, how do you go about building housing in such a large market hungry for it without having people moving in?

This is the point where I have to say, I got nothin'.

Maybe that means some part of my chain of logic is flawed, or maybe some of the base data about the empty cities is flawed or wrong. We have to consider that some of the reports here are wrong or mistaken in some way.

If I knew someone in Inner Mongolia and that they had enough guanxi to comment without incurring personal problems, I could ask them to check out the situation.

"And that's the way is, perhaps."

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-05-30 20:43|| 2011-05-30 20:43|| Front Page Top

#8 CPC Officials + Chin Analysts, Bloggers have said it - Beijing fears a LT, de facto threat to the Party + Chin Socialist State via free market flexibility + sociocultural libertarianism.

Best illustrated or symbolized this Memorial Day weekend by the RB Artic on the forced rescue of starving + abused Chin dogs by a group of private dog-loving Chin citizens, as more likely than not local CPC Bosses knew + tolerated the abusive vendors, espec to escape from formal state investigation + prosecution.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2011-05-30 20:59|| 2011-05-30 20:59|| Front Page Top

#9 Hurrah for learning! Thank you for explaining, Snowy Thing.

The only thing I can think of as a reason for all that building, beyond to provide housing, is to provide jobs. People had to be hired to build the place, and some more people to staff and maintain them ongoing, All of those people won't be revolting any time soon... Does that make sense?

Posted by trailing wife 2011-05-30 21:22|| 2011-05-30 21:22|| Front Page Top

#10 Ask the Chinese and they will tell you "money lives there". There are many "stores of value". Fiat Money, get eaten away with inflation, Gold, can be stolen by thieves and family and property, will keep track with GDP and I believe there are no property taxes in China.

Posted by tipper 2011-05-30 22:46|| 2011-05-30 22:46|| Front Page Top

#11 Snowy, as the witching hour approaches, I'll post an explanation tomorow.

Posted by phil_b 2011-05-30 23:47|| 2011-05-30 23:47|| Front Page Top

00:05 JosephMendiola
00:02 JosephMendiola
23:47 phil_b
23:16 Dale
23:15 Water Modem
23:08 Frank G
22:46 tipper
22:39 phil_b
22:33 phil_b
22:32 Jan
22:12 Bill Clinton
22:00 Bill Clinton
21:51 trailing wife
21:28 mojo
21:25 49 Pan
21:22 trailing wife
21:05 JosephMendiola
20:59 JosephMendiola
20:43 Thing From Snowy Mountain
20:43 JosephMendiola
20:39 JosephMendiola
20:30 Nimble Spemble
20:07 trailing wife
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