The road bridge that collapsed in Genoa was demolished and replaced in two years and cost €202 million, albeit being much shorter, less high and over land instead of water.
Before our upgrade, we were
expecting 2026 Chinese growth will be 4.3 and 2027, real GDP growth will be only 4%. We think that without the
export resilience or export outperformance, around 4% is where Chinese growth might be the trend growth or the equilibrium growth.
But after the Trump-Xi and the fourth plenum, we raised 2026 to 4.8. We raised 2027 real GDP growth to 4.7. So
these are large upward revisions, and I was telling clients that this might be the largest upward revisions to China
real GDP that I have seen since I came to Hong Kong in 2019. So it is consistent with the strategy, thinking about
what the government wants to do and the environment, the rare earths backdrop and the US-China backdrop, which
should allow China to continue exports in the next few years. The combination allowed us to raise our GDP
forecast significantly.
It seems this revision depends a lot on the US-China trade war lying low and China's "export resilience".
Some of the encouraging signals would be the government is set to raise the consumption rate or, equivalently,
reducing household savings rate in the next five years, making sure income distribution is improved. And they want to promote income growth along with economic
growth. So these are all encouraging signals in rebalancing
the economy and boosting consumption.
However, our takeaway is still that the top priority is to
double down on the industrial system, on the technology
self-reliance, and on becoming even more competitive in
manufacturing and outcompete global peers gaining global
market share. The reason why we think this is the case is
that the fourth plenum and the 15th 5-year plan proposal
tells you the strategy for Chinese policymakers is that we're
going to use technology innovation and manufacturing
competitiveness as the catalyst or as a driver of growth.
Once that model works, it should generate more corporate
profits and tax revenues and jobs. And that would trigger a
virtuous cycle of more household income and more
consumption. So that's the strategy how China is going to
grow out of the past model of just relying on property and
infrastructure.
But when you think about that cycle or that virtuous cycle
of using technology and manufacturing to grow your
economy, the first half of it can happen relatively quickly,
right? China has a huge number of talent and a complete
industrial system. It's the largest share of the global
market in many industries, the upstream, the downstream,
the logistics, the government support. The first half we're
more confident that we're going to see the progress in the
coming years in the Chinese companies' market share
globally and Chinese exports in the global market.
But the second half will be more challenging to materialize.
Think about if you have high-tech manufacturing and you
have dark factories, that doesn't necessarily generate a lot
of jobs. And without jobs, you're not going to be seeing
significant increases in household income and therefore
household consumption. It's unclear how fast the
consumption can improve just because exports are strong
and high-tech manufacturing is strong. This is where we
acknowledge the government desire to boost consumption,
but at the end of the day, we think investors will see more
Chinese exports as the immediate outcome of this growth
model.
There were a few years starting in 2019 where aggressive "Wolf warrior diplomacy" became quite prevalent, but China has backed down from that recently because it was wrecking their reputation in the recipient countries. Xue seems to be one of the holdovers.
There was a comment by someone here a long time ago that linked to an article, whose thesis is that the first otaku were radical students, who in the face of defeat of direct action, retreated to their local clubs and made their own works
I think them "creating protest movements" is too simplistic, it's more about cultivating sleeper cells that can hijack public discontent. From my observations the trend is this:
The United States (now also the EU) fund various aligned NGOs in a periphery country. These pro-Western NGOs are way better funded than others and can pull off protests, media coverage, etc.
Those countries have internal contradictions and systemic injustices, discontent rises.
One day something triggers protests. Government violence (sometimes provoked by protesters) then leads to bigger protests.
The pro-Western NGOs and activists are able to throw all their capital and expertise into it. They often emphasise vague feel-goods like anti-corruption and human rights that's conducive to big-tent coalitions.
Their neoliberal beliefs are more compatible with the status quo than more radical proposals. Lack of class consciousness and political naivete often leads to reducing the structural issues to bad actors rather than institutional biases.
Western media and politicians put pressure too, for obvious reasons.
If the established politicians are truly corrupt opportunists and don't care, they can just give in and fuck off with their money to somewhere else, withdraw in the background, or switch sides.
The new neoliberal order often ends up being the same, but with private corruption instead of state corruption and windowdressing over substantive reform.
From an outsider's perspective it is nonsensical and self-defeating, the reason I found it most believable is because I can imagine what mental gymnastics are at play:
Believing so hard that you're not a Nazi because of this or that, your peers believe the same, so using Nazi symbols together obviously isn't a symbol of their true beliefs*, it's just to make the Russians go
.
Plus, who cares what the Russians think, they lie about you constantly anyways, calling everything an Azov base
.
*Platner did this when he downplayed his Totenkopf tattoo by talking about how un-Nazi his beliefs are.
The West voted against Russia's UN resolutions condemning Nazism and racism because they didn't want their support used by "Russian agents" to attack support for Ukraine, so they end up voting against anti-Nazi resolutions which if anything was a bigger propaganda win for Russia than going along.
In both cases it's preaching to the crowd + smug self-righteousness.
The most believable excuse I've heard is that they are adopting Nazi aesthetics "ironically" to trigger the Russians that slander all Ukrainian opposition to them as Nazism, so the story goes. Like how leftists act tongue-in-cheek online as the extremist caricatures they're portrayed as.
But instead of posting Slammer memes it's: "Unlimited genocide on the russian [sic] horde" with Bandera or Hitler in place of Qin Shi Huang, with few hints of absurdity or insincerity. Also acting as Nazis IRL in an actual war.
Along with what cfgaussian said, the Netherlands also gets warnings of us becoming a "narco-state". The ports of Antwerp and Holland competing like in the good old days haha.
The road bridge that collapsed in Genoa was demolished and replaced in two years and cost €202 million, albeit being much shorter, less high and over land instead of water.