Bulletins and News Discussion from January 6th to January 12th, 2025 - The Fall of Trudeau - COTW: Canada

Just last month, there was an outrage on Chinese social media when Yi Gang, the former head of China’s central bank, remarked in an interview during the Beijing-Tokyo Forum that “economically, China should not retaliate against the US economic warfare” and it sparked an outrage so bad that media reports on it have since been removed and we only got fragments of it remained on English outlet like SCMP that doesn’t quite capture the controversy:

“We all understand that, from an economics perspective, [retaliatory actions are] never a good choice,” Yi said at the annual Beijing-Tokyo Forum in Tokyo. “But there’s not much policymakers can do about that” in the face of mounting domestic pressure and rising concerns among international industry players.

…

Against such a backdrop, “as policy advisers, we should speak up for the benefits of free trade”, Yi said, calling it the easiest way to boost the world’s economic growth.

lol

These are the people who have been running the country lol. Our University of Illinois PhD alumnus certainly knows not to bite the hand that once fed him, and I’m sure he’s proud of the fact that he’s learned from the very best.

This has less to do with “bringing the ideas back home”.

This is the consequence of the reform and opening up where a society with near zero inequality reintroduces classes dynamic in less than 10 years after market introduction.

The first faction of the population who got wealth are concentrated in the coasts (or in the party) sell the meritocracy word salad to the poor so they don’t have to redistribute the plunder (aka the destruction of the northeast industry and the increasing inequality in the inland).

People need to stop blaming the “west” for the idea, this is intentional policy by the government in the 80s

We don’t have free healthcare in China, although state-owned enterprise employees usually get decent benefits.

Incidentally, there was a netizen debate about free healthcare just a few months ago sparked by a Beijing University professor (Li Ling) who proposed the implementation of free healthcare to all of China. The online reaction was sort of bifurcated, with detractors going with the usual arguments about how it’s inefficient, China has too many people, healthcare quality will fall, queues will be too long, and “if the government cannot even subsidize the 400 yuan needed to finance the healthcare coverage of each rural farmer, where is the government going to find the money to finance healthcare for the whole country?”

On the other hand, there used to be a very comprehensive healthcare system under Mao. Between the 1950s-70s, there was something called the rural cooperative medical system that provided healthcare coverage to >90% of rural villages, apparently highly praised by WHO and the World Bank for its innovation to provide maximum healthcare benefit at very low cost.

However, following the reform and opening up era in the 1980s, the marketization of the economy also meant that the income growth of rural farmers could not keep up with healthcare cost. Between 1990 and 1999, the income of rural farmers had increased by 2.2 times, but the average clinic visit fee and hospitalization cost had increased by 6.2 and 5.1 times, respectively. This eventually led to the disintegration of the rural cooperative healthcare system and I believe the coverage has already fell to <10% since, and had been replaced by a newer version that supposedly is more compatible with the liberalized economy but apparently has nowhere near the comprehensive coverage as it used to have (I need to study more about this in detail).

In general, the more I dive deep into China’s economic system (especially with an MMT lens), the weirder it gets. The purchasing power parity (PPP) of China has already exceeded the US, its industrial capacity is far beyond any country has built, and yet its per capita GDP is only a fraction of the US. That means the average Chinese labor have been producing output with value that is worth far higher than what they have been receiving with their depressed wages. It is not controversial at all to say that Chinese labor has simultaneously sustained the high income consumer lifestyles of Western countries and the economic development of their own country all these years.

Why would a country ever do that except for the true believer who has complete faith in the neoclassical economic theories.

My grandparents got hospitalized and they only have 15 days before the hospital boots you out because there are not enough beds. We managed to pull strings and bride the director by tell him that my grandmother was a member of the party.

As for the walk in clinics, you can literally walk in and bride the doctor to prescribe you antibiotics.

This is in Guangzhou. There is a year where i went back where relatives of some patients who died do sit in to either: blame the hospital for stopping treatments or beg for money to continue treatments (this is before there is a “street sweeping” operation to avoid these scenes)

"capitalist solution to capitalist problems" that was unnecessary with a proper constitution and jobs guaranteed for all by the state;

Yeah about that, welfare is diminishing (especially healthcare) and job opportunities are also diminishing (especially for the youth)

The irony is that the recent wave of anti-corruption actions, while undeniably good and long overdue, is more likely to be driven by the fact that the government needs to recoup the money stolen by corrupt officials to replenish the coffers. They still haven’t figured out that you can simply print the cash out of thin air.

Why can’t the government just print the money and give it to the people to spend?

Consumption has been subdued since Covid because people have become increasingly worried about the uncertainty of the future (it is a trait in the Chinese society to save for the rainy day especially during uncertain times).

And you know what is going to assuage them of this fear? Just give people, especially poor people, the money to spend so they can stimulate the demand and drive the local economy.

But…. but…. this would violate sound market principles! We are not being a “good country” if we spend more deficit than 3% of the GDP - we could lose our trustworthiness and our reputation of spending responsibly, that will scare away investors! Meanwhile, the US deficit spent 7% of its GDP in 2023 alone and blatantly violating the “rule” it set for other countries lol.

Jair Bolsonaro said these same arguments in Brazil in his campaign which elected him as president.