China is Headed for an Economic Collapse

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goldfish21
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30 Dec 2023, 9:05 pm

CockneyRebel wrote:
After many years of economic success, that must be very hard on them. I wouldn't be surprised if Canada is headed in the same direction.


We should be.. doesn't help that we've outsourced all sorts of manufacturing jobs and relied on selling raw materials to the world, but the biggest recent mistakes have been cheap money fuelling an insane real estate market resulting in housing costs spiralling out of control so far that they're enough to break many peoples' finances when things slow down a little and people can no longer keep up with the interest payments or rent. It's going to break a lot more people than just recent buyers who are in way over their heads.. as there are tons of renters barely hanging on by a thread who are Also going to be crushed.

Not sure how quickly things might happen, but I think we're in for a world of financial and economic hurt in Canada that's going to take decades to recover from. I don't really think we're going to be able to import enough wealthy immigrants to solve this problem Unless they are Forced to spend a metric s**t tonne of money in Canada in order to be allowed entry. Then MAYBE.. but I just don't see it happening.


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David1346
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01 Jan 2024, 12:10 pm

China is one of the largest creditors for the United States. It owns about $859.4 billion in US debt. So long as the U.S. is able to pay the interest on this debt, I don't think this will be a problem.

Until recently China was also the largest trading partner of the U.S. Sadly for the Chinese economy, this is no longer true. Given the increasingly poor quality of Chinese products, the cumbersome laws that their government has imposed (which includes a requirement for sharing all patents and proprietary information with Chinese partners), and the sometimes arbitrary tax laws and regulations that could be imposed by tax strapped local governments (in an effort to generate revenue), a lot of companies are moving to Vietnam or India where the cost of doing business is lower.

Canada is currently the lead trading partner for the United States followed by Mexico.



naturalplastic
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01 Jan 2024, 1:23 pm

^
Interesting.

My job is going into retail stores and physically counting their inventory.

Up until a few years ago it seemed like EVERY thing that passed through my hands of off store shelves had the "made in China" label.

But in the last couple of years only a large fraction of stuff has that ...most stuff comes from one a many third world countries: Vietnam...Indonesia...Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Mexico. There even some items in one store made in an subsaharan African country (forget which country).



David1346
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03 Jan 2024, 3:08 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
^

But in the last couple of years only a large fraction of stuff has that ...most stuff comes from one a many third world countries: Vietnam...Indonesia...Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Mexico. There even some items in one store made in an subsaharan African country (forget which country).


I saw a report that Vietnam has excellent quality products. Sadly, Vietnam is also a small country and there is a limit to the number of industries it can support given the available workforce. I was surprised to learn that India now has the world's largest population. China's old one-child policy is now coming into play as the country's birthrate has significantly declined to the point where if their economy wasn't in free fall, the number of retiring seniors would outpace the influx of younger employees.

As it is, far too many seniors can't afford to retire. Many lost their life's savings when their banks either collapsed or someone embezzled their savings. Youth unemployment is at a record high, partially because so many foreign manufacturers have now left the country. This has sadly coincided with China's largest ever college graduating class. Some six million students graduated from universities from across the country and a lot of these people can't find jobs.

Those companies which have jobs have been forced to whittle down applications by requiring applicants to have a Master's or higher.

Africa is a potentially huge future market as well as a possible source of cheap labor. I suspect investors would have to consider political stability as a prerequisite for investment since places like Zimbabwe are in economic freefall due in part to hyperinflation, rampant, HIV/AIDS/COVID, and a brain drain in which many of the best educated have immigrated to other countries.

Mexico is geographically convenient which reduces the cost of shipping. It also has a nicely developing industrial sector with low labor costs. I wonder how much better the manufacturing sector would be if the cartel wasn't in business. As it is, cartel activity extends throughout the country, though in varying levels of intensity.



Mona Pereth
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09 Jan 2024, 12:04 pm

goldfish21 wrote:
There’s gotta be some nerds amongst their Billion+ population that can figure out what to do next. China’s been around a long time and will continue. It just might change after this most recent financial house of cards starting to come crashing down is all.

Some nerds being able to "figure out what to do next" is one thing. Said nerds actually being in a position of power to do anything about it is another matter. The people in power are, in all likelihood, not said nerds, nor in touch with same.


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