The End of Chinese Manufacturing?

matthewsx said:
I asked about this a few decades back when I still lived in Cupertino, I couldn't afford a house and asked a Chinese friend. They explained it - 100 year mortgages and 3 or 4 families in a house.
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You’re not fitting 3 or 4 families in a Shanghai apartment, out in the countryside where you can get a house, yes that is likely. They do frequently have more than one generation in an apartment, especially when the kids are just starting out and can’t afford a place of their own. My wife’s cousin and his wife and daughter live with his mom in her apartment, so there is three generations in one apartment.
I’ll have to ask my wife when she wakes up on the 100 year mortgages, I knew they were longer than here, but didn’t realize that long. Another difference from us I just thought about, the Chinese are better savers than we are and many families have wealth they can pass on to their kids. It helps when you have one kid and don’t have to split it up, then due to the one child policy, you have two sets of grandparents for one grandchild to pass your wealth on to. China does not have an inheritance or estate tax, so that helps keep the wealth in the family.
 
matthewsx said:
I asked about this a few decades back when I still lived in Cupertino, I couldn't afford a house and asked a Chinese friend. They explained it - 100 year mortgages and 3 or 4 families in a house.

I haven't watched the video but economics is a very interesting topic to me. Everyone wants things to be better for their kids than it is for them but world population has doubled since I was young. I think that those of us who are able to make at least some of the things we need, and repair, and grow food, will be better off than many.

Any economy that subsides industry to gain market share will eventually hit a wall....

John
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I've watched several of his videos. Among his more interesting forecasts is, due to the one child policy 30 years ago, there will be half as many Chinese by 2050. His take on Chinese food and energy dependence makes any major disruption to the current world order (like invasion of Taiwan, resulting in sanctions similar to those being brought to bear on Russia) catastrophic for China. This doesn't mean that Xi won't try it. He has done what autocrats the world over do, surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear.
 
We pushed the pendulum too far and know it is attempting to return to neutral. One of the things I have come to appreciate about this hobby is the self sufficiency is allows, yes we still need raw materials. But we all need to realize that we have become accustomed to artificially low import prices. While it may have been a decade or three those prices were artificially low not the normal.
 
Early this week I saw that Apple is looking to move a larger percentage of it's iphone manufacturing to other countries.

mmcmdl said:
There will always be plenty of " old iron " around . :encourage:
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Unfortunately the prices will respond accordingly. Maybe the best investment opportunity for 2022? :)
 
This is a good discussion. I watched the video. Enough for me to subscribe to his channel and see what else he has to say about what is going on. My only criticism is that he is light on hard facts and heavy on general rhetoric - meaning, he makes an assertion based on some observations that make sense on the surface, but I'm sure that there are other factors that must be taken into consideration as part of the full explanation. 11 minutes of generalities left me with more questions than answers.

So far, so good with the no politics rule. As the admin, I would not be doing my job to kindly remind people of our no politics rule here. There are a zillion other sites we can go rant on about politics. So , please keep the discussion out of the death spiral.
 
You trained us good Bryan :)

I agree about your assessment. There was a vid a while back where two Americans visited “ghost cities” in China and it is just stunning to see. They helped kinda give background of how these huge cities of shells could be even possible because of the need for investment and how they could not afford to finish them because of the distance away and the fact that the new owner when sold would be bound to completely redo it. Something about not taking on the previous owners karma. I can’t help but see the parallels with the real estate market here and how there is nothing affordable anymore.
 
I saw an estimate that the one child policy reduced the population by 400 million, and possibly saved the country from collapse. One side effect of the one child policy is you now have a couple generations of spoiled kids. They got everything they wanted since they had two sets of grandparents with one grandchild. We were shopping in a mall a number of years ago and i commented to my wife how much more expensive toys and Nike sneakers were than in the states, and they were made there. She said when you are an only child in China, you get whatever you want, so they can charge a lot since the parents/ grandparents will pay.

If you want to see an interesting insight into China, look on YouTube for serpentza and laowhy86. They both lived in China for many years and have a unique insight being foreigners. They don't post about manufacturing, but they have been exposing the fake facade and corruption in China and had to escape before they got arrested.
 
I find China interesting. Thanks Ischgl99. The great amount of change that has taken place since Mao. I was in Hong Kong when it was still British, a great place.
About imports: I tried to order a PM BS-1 indexing head yesterday. Out of stock! Backordered. I'm now considering whether to buy one off eBay or wait for an unknown amount of time for PM. PM's discount machine division has been listing them out of stock for quite awhile. PM is more expensive but their customer service makes up for it.
 
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