Reality of Chinese Economy

By Dyske    September 5th, 2009

I was hoping that China would help us pull out of this recession but it is looking unlikely. China has its own problems which are becoming difficult to manage. Foreign Policy has an article about how China is cooking its books. Well the US has been doing it too, so why wouldn’t China? Of course, they go a few steps further. According to the article, the government officials show up to your factory and offer you a big chunk of money upfront to “resign”, so that you wouldn’t be part of the unemployment rate.

What I find funny is this: Why do they have to bother with such a scheme? Why don’t they just make up the numbers? Why bother collecting any data? I think they should bail out Madoff and hire him as their minister of finance.

Here is an interesting video I came across on one of my favoriate finanical blogs. The guy in the video explains how all those big buildings are standing completely empty with no prospect of getting anyone in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ektMQGbW3wk

4 Responses

  1. Rob says:

    October 26th, 2009 at 9:05 am

    I’ve lived in China for 4 of the last 7 years now and have seen lots of “junk” buildings get rehabilitated, finished and rented out. They’re made of cement, not wood; they don’t rot. Although I can’t really judge what’s in the video as the Chinese government is still blocking Youtube.

    Realistically, all statistics here are complete rubbish; but if you’re just figuring that out now, you’re a bit thick.

  2. Robert Geczi says:

    December 5th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Why look to China to pull “you out of the recession”? The US is going down, just face it. It’s time you all jump ship and start a new country or something. 😉

  3. Inst says:

    December 9th, 2009 at 9:58 am

    “What I find funny is this: Why do they have to bother with such a scheme? Why don’t they just make up the numbers? Why bother collecting any data? I think they should bail out Madoff and hire him as their minister of finance.”

    There’s systematic problems with their statistics bureaus. Promotions for government officials are based in part on GDP statistics, so there’s incentives for officials at lower levels to deceive the central government. So the center develops methods to counteract mundane fraud, and the periphery develops new types of deception.

  4. Junko says:

    January 30th, 2012 at 7:06 pm

    Junk buildings are a huge problem in China, I went to China last year and a few newly built business complexes near the place I live were empty and hard to rent out, what’s more, they spent millions of dollars building them and then just leave them there and let them rot. I personally think, if they have all these money to build these buildings, they should spend more on education and reduce the illiterate rate (which is another really really huge problem in China, especially in the rural areas).