This town is coming like a ghost town

[Walsingham]

 

Take a close look at this image. This is not a sports complex leftover from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics; it is a marvel of modern architectural design -- but for all the wrong reasons.

 

Zhengzhou New District is just one of China's many "ghost towns." China's economy depends on growth rather than profit. So, to fuel growth stats, the Chinese government has been building unnecessary housing units in remote areas of the country. Officially, in 2010, a mind-boggling 65 million homes were vacant.

 

China's economy is a clever web of cheap currency, high-volume exports, low to non-existent margins, and loose lending practices, all for the purpose of pacifying its massive population. Yes, its economy is growing rapidly. But does "bigger" mean "more robust"?

 

From Stratfor.com again. It's Friday. I'm catching up on lighter reading.

Edited October 7, 2011 by Walsingham

[213374U]

 

The world might yet end in 2012, at this rate.

[Calax]

According to my Chinese History teacher, there's also a bill making it's way through congress that will increase Tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to "bring jobs back" here, but he's worried it'd trigger a trade war.

[Humodour]

According to my Chinese History teacher, there's also a bill making it's way through congress that will increase Tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to "bring jobs back" here, but he's worried it'd trigger a trade war.

 

The Australian PM just announced a bill, with little press coverage to my surprise, that will extend the existing new "buy Australian" regulations on Government departments to ALL enterprise in the country - including for example our mining companies, banks, whatnot. It's a bit more nuanced than that, and it only enforces buying Australian if there is a viable Australian alternative within a similar price range.

 

Basically it would seem to be an anti-outsourcing bill for hardware. I'm not sure what country it will most impact but the obvious candidate is China.

 

Seems a bit protectionist to me, but then maybe in this current climate of political and economic uncertainty in the rest of the world, this kind of protectionism - bolstering Australian manufacturing can be forgiven.

[Walsingham]

I wouldn't call it protectionism, in the sense of anti-competitive. In the UK we recently had our only rolling stock manufacturer hard hit by the government buying abroad. Where something is genuinely in the same price 'bracket' it makes huge sense for govt. to buy locally. If foreign companies want to break into the market they simply need to outbid on performance or cost.