Post #1716702

@soapone @D-Droid And that's all part of an infinitely stronger policy of financial repression. Real estate was pushed for a bunch of reasons, but one reason it got so huge is that the subjects of the PRC have basically nothing else they can invest in. Plus they've failed to escape the middle income trap (almost everyone has failed). "Tech self-reliance" ... not really. They can't make their own chips without external inputs, which is true of everyone else. I'm not even talking about high end stuff that needs EUV, the party will fall before they ever reach that milestone, but basic stuff that's "good enough" for consumers and the military ... unless really high end "AI" becomes critical for the latter. In time it's possible they'll overcome that, but it's damned hard and even harder to sustain. See Japan's short period in the sun for semiconductors. Really, the most they can do is trash Taiwan and thus TSMC. They've also used up their "rare" earth's weapon. Really, you have to think about what comes after Xi, who's been a very poor helmsman and is getting up there in years. Batteries, yes, they're very good at those. Making electronic gadgets, although the workforce is rapidly dropping due to the one child policy. Oh, no social safety net outside of state run enterprises and the 4-2-1 problem of parental and grandparental support. When their youth unemployment problem is Officially worse than ours. See also "laying flat." "infrastructure improvements" are past the point of diminishing returns, and they're also running out of money. They could also lose up to a hundred million people if the Three Gorges Dam fails at a particularly bad time. "further economic digitization" surely you jest. Have you never heard of social credit scoring?? And that supposes there's a real economy under there. Again, they're running out of money. And I reemphasize they've really pissed off too many of the countries they want to export to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap