I have a new Mises piece that details how I have taken a bearish, 180 turn on China’s economy.
It originally began as an email to Robert Wenzel and was later flushed out into a proper article based on conversations I’ve had with KY Leong and Mark DeWeaver.
So with apologies to Mish (whom I called out earlier), my bullishness was incorrect. I should also point out that Lew called this stupendous bubble many months ago.
With any luck, other, more media-savvy libertarians (two in particular) will also stop trying to peddle Sino-based indices to potential clients. China is not the US in 1909.
Bubble, what bubble?
One example that I highlight in the footnotes: stocks have risen 79% in Shanghai (since January) and took a 5% nose-dive two days ago when there were rumors that policy makers will “curb inflows” — to cool off the officially recognized bubble. Who knows when it will officially peak, so buyer beware…
Other bearish articles of interest:
- Notes on a real estate trip in China (Pettis)
- RMB 15 trillion in new Chinese lending, can we turn this thing off (Pettis)
- China: Bogus Boom? (AEI)
- Beijing Borrows $8.8 Billion for Financial District (Bloomberg)
- Murky world of local finance exposes holes in China’s stimulus programme (Dragon Beat)
- The Four Cheapest Plays in Emerging Markets (Barron’s)
- China warns banks over asset bubbles (Financial Times)
- The Architecture of War: A Look at Saddam Hussein’s Palaces (Flavorwire)
- Infographic: all US one-time expenditures vs the bailout (BoingBoing)
- A Reporter At Large: Life After Rwanda (New Yorker)
- New tax plan sparks China protest (BBC)
- North Korean soccer brings success to Chinese apparel company (LA Times)
- Book touring in Beijing (Financial Times)
- CCTV Attacks Google Porn Links, Fake Interview Exposed (chinaSmack)
- Business: Sterilized Gold (TIME in 1937)
- 20,000 Nations Above the Sea (Reason)
In addition to Evan Osnos (New Yorker) another Sino-centric blog I recommend is from the Financial Times, Dragon Beat.
Here are some recent posts of interest:
- The west should heed advice from China’s bank regulators (Link)
- Is China ready to “empty the bird cage’? (Link)
- Time to stop talking of renminbi as reserve currency (Link)
- Why the crisis is good for China’s Pearl River Delta (Link)
- China’s land-rights reform is vital but not enough (Link)
- How real is the threat of social unrest from China’s army of unemployed? (Link)
I’ve been digesting everything I have experienced from the past 6 months and think that a recent Geeks-on-a-Plane entry sums up the state of web services here succinctly.
In a word: robust. The level of interactive and on-demand services is relatively the same, if not better than what I experienced in Korea and the US. And sites like Xunlei really make you feel bad for anyone that cannot stream movies por gratis.
I also recommend a detailed interview with Kai-Fu Lee that I bumped into after a brief mention by Evan Osnos. Here is the pdf.
And to whet your appetite, here is a small presentation Lee recently gave in Beijing:
For your consideration, I put together a new piece that takes on Web 2.0 services and China.
I wrote it about a week ago in response to the grandstanding of guys like Nicolas Carlson, who yack endlessly about how evil China yet don’t say jack squat about the crap that goes on in their own countries of residence.
A few notes:
- Regarding Miranda, this was in reference to the planet in the scifi film Serenity as well as the decades-old police warning, “your Miranda rights.”
- As far as the magnum opus: the maximum size of a tweet is held to 140 characters. This is due to the 160 character constraints of SMS. A username is limited to 15 characters to allow forwarding or rebroadcasting the message. Modern microblogging is designed to take advantage of updates from cell phones. And while it certainly adds a new dimension to “citizen journalism” I was poking fun of people that see twitter as some extrarevolutionary tool that will topple regimes.
- I have no real animosity against twitter: it’s not bad, but definitely overhyped. However I have no use for it and I live a pretty exciting life compared to most people. It has its niche, but I’d much rather write original content for a website that I either control or have a vested interested in. It pretty much fills the role for Delicious (the social bookmarking site). Also, the vast majority of tweets are just echos, not much in originality.
- And as far as hashes, I only added them at the end as a kind of “yea d-bag, I don’t use twitter, but I know the lingo and know what hash tags are.”
- As far as content, all of the numbers are easily reproducable. Here is a brief article on incarceration rates in the US (wiki entry). Extra credit to those that look up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and waterboarding.
- And while some of it might be agitprop, this documentary touches on how the CIA was using Tibet as a spring board to reinvade the mainland, much like Taiwan was being used as staging grounds for reinvading the southern provinces. The Lama is merely a tool/relic of the Cold War and should get a real job. See the independent references in the article.
- Other geekerati/culture droppings that didn’t make the cut:
If you looked at those old TIME articles (circa 1933) I posted earlier, the one on Japan says this at the very end:
Undoubtedly Japan’s “inflation boom” distracted her leaders last week from hard and ominous facts which they must sooner or later face. Government expenditures are running 70% ahead of current revenue, a catastrophic spread. Like all booms the current, superficial Japanese prosperity is basically unsound. With Manchuria still full of Chinese bandit-soldiers who are still full of fight, the Empire stands committed to further stupendous military expenditures, consequent further inflation of the yen and the most strenuous testing in 1933 of Japan’s whole fabric, economic, fiscal, political.
No other policy makers have followed the same, misbegotten steps since then, right?
- Kim Jong Il’s CafePress Shop (Web Newser)
- China: Pyongyang just wants attention (Asia Times)
- Russian general says new US-Russian arms pact not to go below 1,500 nuclear warheads each (AP)
- Could the U.S. Be Drawn into a New Korean War? (TIME)
- Photo of the Day: Best of May 2009 (National Geographic)
- BRICs Buying IMF Bonds to Join “Big Leagues,” Goldman Says (Bloomberg)
- Chinese Investment Surges, Countering Record Export Slump (Bloomberg)
- China to Speed Australian Investment After Rio Rebuff (Bloomberg)
- China Seeks Currency Debate, Says No One Wants to Dump Dollar (Bloomberg)
- Get Ready for Inflation and Higher Interest Rates (WSJ)
I posted this link a few days ago, but thought the video was worth embedding:
Yea, KFC operates more than 2500 restaurants out here and McDonalds has just over 1000. In the small city I live in, there are 3 KFCs and 1 McDonalds (and several knock-offs).
Here are some case-studies discussing this growth phenomenon:
- KFC in China (IBS CDC)
- Kentucky Fried Chicken in China (Ivey Business Journal)
- KFC – ‘a foreign brand with Chinese characteristics’ (John Sexton)
- McDonald’s in China (ICMR)
- McDonald’s China takes on KFC with drive-through concept (Meat Process)
- N. Korea Follows Nuclear Test With a Favor for Captive Americans (Washington Post)
- At Border, S. Koreans Heed a Blustery Neighbor (NY Times)
- China After Tiananmen (Reason)
- A new KFC opens everyday in China (CNN Video)
- Ireland Loses Iceland Stigma as Euro Ensures No Return to Past (Bloomberg)
- India Feels Less Vulnerable as Outsourcing Presses On (NY Times)
- Tech Company Helps South Korean Students Ace Entrance Tests (NY Times)
- China’s Dumbest Move Yet (The Motley Fool)
- Clark Howard: Can China own us? (CNN) — interesting numbers, crazy conclusion
And here is the info nugget of the day from the above NYT piece:
Last year, South Korea spent 55 trillion won, 6 percent of its gross domestic product, on public education. But private education expenditures amounted to an additional 20 trillion won, a burden that has been cited as a factor in South Korea’s low birth rate. Eight of every 10 students from elementary school through high school take after-school classes from private tutors or at cram schools, online or offline. Offline cram school courses cost up to five times as much as their online counterparts.
So some people have emailed me about the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen square protests.
I usually send them Justin Raimondo’s excellent piece written 10 years ago.
If you want a condensed view, I heartily endorse Ron Paul’s bad ass speech given yesterday.
Seriously guys. If you live in America and you don’t protest on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion, yet you get all flustered about China, you are a hypocrite. If you don’t protest during the anniversary of the Branch Davidian siege, you are a hypocrite. If you don’t protest the dozens of other domestic deaths caused each year due to “human rights” abuses in the US, you are a hypocrite. Ruby Ridge?Kent State?
Heck, the cockamamie raid at the mormon YFZ Ranch occurred just last spring, yet you didn’t see busy-body Chinese nationals burning US flags and calling for a boycott of GM or IBM.
And don’t even get started with that Tibet bull crap.
Let us ignore the fact that the Lama voluntarily went to Beijing in 1954 and broke bread with Mao & Co. for several months and signed various agreements. Let us also ignore the fact that the Dalia Lama was in bed with the CIA and MI6 through Operation ST Circus. For more on that see: “A Cold War in Shangri La†by Tenzig Sonam, “Democratic Imperialism†by Michael Barker, “CIA’s Secret War in Tibet†by Joe Bageant, “Tibet, the ‘great game’ and the CIA†by Richard Bennett.
Yea, I said it. He’s a tool who speaks English and is good at winning the hearts and minds of naive people with slick slogans.
In short, if you feel like protesting some grave injustice, be sure you’ve wagged your finger at the local injustices first before tweeting about the savages that live on the other side of the tracks.
For your consideration, I put together a 
So some people have emailed me about the 20th anniversary of the Tienanmen square protests.