this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
65 points (68.2% liked)

World News

39019 readers
2162 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

China has reached the end of its economic boom. What comes next should worry every American business — and the rest of the world.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

counting China completely out when it's clowning the rest of the world on infrastructure right now

Wtf does infrastructure have to do with anything. There's lots of Roman infrastructure all over the Mediterranean, when was the last time you met a citizen of the SPQR?

The only correlation building infrastructure has with economic prosperity is that governments often use infrastructure projects to patch over economic lulls and stimulate a lagging economy.

But for infrastructure projects to be a benefit they need to deliver more productivity to the economy than they cost to build, at minimum enough to cover the debt taken on the build it.

China used infrastructure spending to artificially stimulate the economy at a breakneck pace, and now they have all this infrastructure nobody is using. High speed trains nobody rides, entire cities built from scratch with few to no residents or businesses, and there's only so long you can do that before it becomes unsustainable - which is now.

So what exactly are they going to do with all this infrastructure now, that will save their economy? Sell it? Half the problem is that there is no buyers.

Democracy and free market capitalism are not the ideal form a civilisation should take for many reasons, but they both have very powerful self-correcting mechanisms which have made it the most stable form of nation-state. China's only protection against being run into the ground was its term limits, allowing leadership to step down gracefully without losing face and new leadership to step up and change with the times. Xi Jinping removed those. It remains to be seen if he has the capacity to steer away from catastrophe.