Engineers like to build. And that’s why China builds huge cities with great infrastructure.
The Chinese are used to a physically dynamic and changing landscape as a symbol of progress.
The current generation of Americans is not.
China consumes half of the coal it produces.
China has about 100 million workers in manufacturing.
The perception of Japan shifted from shoddy goods to high-quality goods in the 1970s.
The same might happen with Chinese goods now.
China is
estimated to be 45%
of the manufacturing capacity of the world by 2030.
All high-income countries, including the US, combined, will be 38%.
Despite four decades of liberalization, China has made a very limited contribution to the global culture.
Sanctions by Trump(2016-20) and porous implementation by Biden (2020-24) have riled Chinese companies.
They used to buy the best quality chips in the world (American).
Now, they are diversifying their supply chain by building a homegrown one.
Mao believed that a huge population was a source of strength for the country.
He said, “The more people, the more power”.
Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, believed that a huge population would be a burden on the country.
Over 300 million children were aborted during the one-child policy of Deng Xiaoping.
There were several cases of induced early childbirth against a mother’s wish in December because
the government officials want to use the leftover quota of the year!
For 100 days in 1991,
not a single child was allowed to be born
in Shandong province. Everyone was killed via abortion or forced sterilization.
The one-child policy lasted longer than expected, as a million-strong bureaucracy was working on it.
Killing the policy would mean killing that bureaucracy as well.
Authoritarian systems are not good at spreading bad news.
During his third term, Xi Jinping
dropped
the only woman in 25 member top-committee as an indication of his emphasis that
Women should focus on keeping the
husband happy.
As China shifted to pro-natal policies in 2015, the Chinese state media showed in a more docile position and wrote articles
saying that
don’t care
about your husband’s affairs.
The divorce grant rate has
dropped
from 70% to 40% as well.
China followed extremely rigid COVID-19 isolation policies, which ultimately failed.
There was even a case where a pregnant woman, bleeding and sitting outside the hospital, waited till
her PCR test results came in before she was allowed to enter the hospital.
Even infants who tested positive along with their parents were separated from their parents
by China during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Till 2018, the chief regulator of the Internet, Lu Wei, was taking equity in companies and then changing the regulations
to benefit those companies.
This all
ended in 2018, the government became strict, cutting down unicorns in China.
Xi Jinping hates the virtual economy, including
blockchain and metaverse.
He thinks it is not good for the real economy in the long run.
Now, there is 400K USD.
salary cap
to dissuade Physics and Math majors from joining finance firms.
Social media brings little economic gain but risks bringing political upheaval.
After the COVID-19 pandemic response and the killing of the unicorns, many young Chinese are disillusioned and are leaving China.
