China

[steven1976]

Got to plan for the future!
I actually believe China is along way from bad times. I'd call it preparation for world domination building these cities.

Lets not forget china is only really a few years old in what is happening there. They are money hungry than anywhere else and they are not sitting around moaning about benefits and the government. They will be the biggest economy without a doubt in a few years if they aren't already.

[CaerMyrddin]

Everything is falling to place. China was the biggest economy in the 17th century but industrial revolution has done the trick to get the west far ahead. An awkward way to rule the country has kept them from keeping the pace during many years, but they will claim their natural place imho. It will be a bumpy road, but it's fairly clear what's ahead. They won't be able to compete in terms of low prices in the long term, but should they?

I'm with kelpie on Africa's view. The way societies are organized there and their culture makes it much harder to improve things. Only been to a couple of countries there, but didn't have a submersive experience. But I have a friend that lives there (was with him last weekend btw) and the things he tells are daunting. Corruption, corruption and more corruption. Last week he was stopped by the cops (that drive big priced cars although their wages disallow it) that are always trying to catch you on something to pick their bribe. As they were searching his car for irregularities, a car crashed a motorcycle (and the motorcycle driver eventually died) and they didn't even move. They kept looking his car. No one around asked the cops for help.
So, if you consider the implications of this kind of society, blaming the West for what happens there is OTT, imho.

[steven1976]

"Corruption, corruption and more corruption."

Is that not what makes the world tick?

The police are the same here. I've had some fun over the years getting stopped by the BIB. At the end of the day, they are just trying to make a bit of money on the side.

China will compete I think, as they have the work force and now they have the technology.

I love china as its the one place in asia that you really feel like you are in Asia. No one speaks, English, everyone spits at you, everyone shouts when they talk so you feel intimated, hotels are shite, the food is shite (except Mc Ds), customer service is non existant, but it has something great about it.

[hgodden]

I saw an interesting interview the other day on Bloomberg with a director of a multinational (whose name I forget) who said that one thing everyone seems to be drastically overlooking is the effect that automation and technology is having (and will have progressively in the future) on jobs worldwide, particularly in economies like China and India.

Even now, apparantly huge swathes of people who work in manufacturing in these countries are being replaced by machines that can do their jobs even cheaper than they can, and as technology becomes more and more efficient this is only going to continue. One of the suppliers he works with in India has cut its workforce from having tens of thousands to just a few hundred, yet output is up because of the technology they're using!

If large amounts of people in these countries are to be laid off and the wealth can't trickle down then economies like that of China aren't going to grow into the kind of thing many people might be expecting.

Incidentally, youth unemployment around the world is an enormous issue, not just like we see in continental europe. Compared to a lot of european countries the UK is seen as a jobs paradise, and I'm not just talking about Romania etc. Previously bouyant jobs markets in well established countries have collapsed and it's not just due to the global financial crash - the exponential rise in technology is leaving more and more people jobless in many different sectors as machines and systems can do more for less, and those companies that don't adopt them get left behind. Just wait till they can build the technology to replace people in the service sector with holograms etc and we'll see the same problems here too! Add to that the enormous exponential rise in world population, particularly in poorer parts of the world where people are more likely to live in slums and rely on menial jobs that will become more and more obsolete, what kind of a world are we going to be looking at in 30 years time?

[andyfuller]

From last night:

DURATION: 1 HOUR
Robert Peston travels to China to investigate how this mighty economic giant could actually be in serious trouble. China is now the second largest economy in the world and for the last 30 years China's economy has been growing at an astonishing rate. While Britain has been in the grip of the worst recession in a generation, China's economic miracle has wowed the world.

Now, for BBC Two's award-winning strand This World, Peston reveals what has actually happened inside China since the economic collapse in the west in 2008. It is a story of spending and investment on a scale never seen before in human history - 30 new airports, 26,000 miles of motorways and a new skyscraper every five days have been built in China in the last five years. But, in a situation eerily reminiscent of what has happened in the west, the vast majority of it has been built on credit. This has now left the Chinese economy with huge debts and questions over whether much of the money can ever be paid back.

Interviewing key players including the former American treasury secretary Henry Paulson, Lord Adair Turner, former chairman of the FSA, and Charlene Chu, a leading Chinese banking analyst, Robert Peston reveals how China's extraordinary spending has left the country with levels of debt that many believe can only end in an economic crash with untold consequences for us all

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... rt_Peston/

[Euler]

Saw this last night. I know somebody in China who has been screaming at me for years along a similar line, so I would concur with Peston.

[steven1976]

Looking forward to watching it tonight. I personally feel it is along way from disaster and they have just been warming up driven by exports the past 10+ years. I think it would be difficult to know truthfully the financial strength of the government and now the locals are spending.

[superfrank]

Copper... http://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?t=HG

at its lowest since July 2009.

the size of the credit / construction / property bubbles in China are mind-blowing - they've made all the mistakes of Japan but on a monumentally bigger scale.