Kina

[franksun]

Kina er kommunistisk og havner helt ned på plass nr. 112 under "Index of Economic freedom" (http://www.heritage.org/research/featur ... m?id=China) likevel så har de en ganske stor vekst og hvis 60. minutes sa at det var et spørsmål om de ville overleve kommunismen med veksten de har. Hvorfor har Kina som har så streng økonimipolitikk blitt så kraftig?

[Staten]

Jeg har også problemer med å forstå argumentet med at det er liberalisering som har ført til dette. Foreign direct investment er på 40 milliarder dollar, noe som bare er det dobbelt av det som investeres i Norge av utenlandske selskaper.

Foreign direct investment (net): $46.7 billion

Skatten og bedriftsskatten er svært høy.

China’s top income tax rate is 45 percent.

The World Bank reports that the government consumed 13.2 percent of GDP in 2002. In the same year, according to the International Monetary Fund, China reported receiving 4.31 percent of its total revenues from state-owned enterprises and government ownership of property, down from the 6.62 percent reported in the 2004 Index. According to the American Enterprise Institute, however, “China’s system…[has] a large state sector, party committees even in private enterprises, [and] corporate boards that are unable to fire managers…

[Onarki]

Skatten og bedriftsskatten er svært høy.

China’s top income tax rate is 45 percent.

Kina har en av verdens mest intelligente befolkninger. Det vil si at dersom det var like fritt i Kina som i feks. USA skulle normalt BNP være på høyde med/høyere enn i USA. Det som i stedet har skjedd er at Kina har redusert skatten fra 100% for alle, til 45% og lavere. Eller rettere sagt. Eiendomsretten har gått fra 0% til 55% og høyere. Åpenbart må slikt gi en dramatisk konsekvens i form av økt vekst. Men det sier seg også selv at med konfusianisme, korrupsjon, kommunisme og diktatur er det grenser for hvor mye BNP kan vokse før stagnasjonen inntreffer. Husk at Norge også hadde voldsom vekst etter krigen under Arbeiderpartiet.

[Vegard Martinsen]

Onarki:

Husk at Norge også hadde voldsom vekst etter krigen under Arbeiderpartiet.

Ja, og grunnen til at veksten i Norge (og i Europa) var så stor etter 1945 var Marshall-hjelpen: svært billige lån (eller gaver) fra USA som ble gitt til mange land i Europa. (Norge fikk 253 mill., derav 214 mill. som gave.)

Så den som bygde Norge etter krigen var ikke Einar Gerhandsen, det var George C. Marshall, USAs utenriksminister! (Si dette til sosialister og legge merke til det morsomme ansiktsuttrykket de får.)

Men politikere kan aldri bygge noe dersom man ser alt under ett: de pengene de evt bygger for et tatt fra et sted, så når de bygger noe har de ødelagt et annet sted for mer enn de bruker på å bygge.

[Onarki]

Ja, og grunnen til at veksten i Norge (og i Europa) var så stor etter 1945 var Marshall-hjelpen: svært billige lån (eller gaver) fra USA som ble gitt til mange land i Europa. (Norge fikk 253 mill., derav 214 mill. som gave.)

Marshall-hjelpen er selvsagt svært viktig, men en må ikke glemme at gunstige lån og gaver har blitt gitt til andre land enn de europeiske uten samme resultat. Afrika har fått enorme overføringer i form av bistand og lån via verdensbanken uten at dette har gitt noen som helst form for gunstig effekt. Palestinerne har alene fått mer i gaver det siste tiåret, enn den samlede Marshall-hjelpen som ble gitt til Europa. Følgelig er ikke lån og gaver nok til å skape vekst. Noe må ha vært fundamentalt forskjellig i Europa etter krigen enn i feks. Afrika og de palestinske selvstyreområdene.

Jeg tror det er rimelig åpenbart hva som er forskjellen. Europa, til tross for sitt hang til sosialdemokratiet, består av forholdsvis moralske personer. Europa etter krigen var et relativt fredelig sted med forholdsvis lite korrupsjon, dette i sterk kontrast til Afrika og det palestinske selvstyret.

Men politikere kan aldri bygge noe dersom man ser alt under ett: de pengene de evt bygger for et tatt fra et sted, så når de bygger noe har de ødelagt et annet sted for mer enn de bruker på å bygge.

Ja, bevare meg vel. Jeg sa ikke at Gerhardsen og arbeiderpartiet bygget landet etter krigen. Det var det åpenbart kapitalister og vanlige folk som gjorde i kraft av å søke sin egeninteresse. Mitt poeng var bare at det er et spektrum fra pur kapitalisme til pur sosialisme. Pur sosialisme betyr pur destruksjon av et samfunn, mens pur kapitalisme er det mest produktive samfunnet mulig. I mellom disse to ytterpunktene finnes det derimot mellomtilstander, med lavere vekst og mindre grad av statlig ødeleggelse. I Norge etter krigen var forholdet mellom statlige inngrep og privat eiendom i favør privat eiendom, dvs. at inngrepene ennå ikke var så store at de ødela vekst. Dette er kjennetegnet av bl.a. det faktum at folketrygdfondet ennå ikke var innført på dette tidspunktet.

Det samme ser vi i Kina i dag. Kina var på bunn under Mao, men fra og med reformene i retning økt eiendomsrett på 70-tallet har landet opplevd økonomisk vekst. Åpenbart fører en slik liberalisering (om enn så liten) til økonomisk vekst. Men dersom Kina fortsetter med samme grad av undertrykking som i dag vil de på et eller annet tidspunkt oppleve stagnasjon. Grad av beskatning og ufrihet bestemmer på hvilket nivå dette inntreffer.

[Vegard Martinsen]

Marshall-hjelpen er selvsagt svært viktig, men en må ikke glemme at gunstige lån og gaver har blitt gitt til andre land enn de europeiske uten samme resultat. Afrika har fått enorme overføringer i form av bistand og lån via verdensbanken uten at dette har gitt noen som helst form for gunstig effekt. Palestinerne har alene fått mer i gaver det siste tiåret, enn den samlede Marshall-hjelpen som ble gitt til Europa. Følgelig er ikke lån og gaver nok til å skape vekst. Noe må ha vært fundamentalt forskjellig i Europa etter krigen enn i feks. Afrika og de palestinske selvstyreområdene.

Jeg er helt enig med Onarki i dette.

Jeg sa ikke at Gerhardsen og arbeiderpartiet bygget landet etter krigen

.

Neida, og det var ikke min menig å polemisere mot Onarki.

[QIQrrr]

Times Online, February 7, 2010: An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949. “We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference. He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.” Officially, China has reacted by threatening sanctions against American companies selling arms to Taiwan and cancelling military visits. But Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further. “This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.” A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”. As a crescendo of strident nationalistic rhetoric swirls through the Chinese media and blogosphere, American officials seem baffled by what has gone wrong and how fast it has happened - China’s hawks demand cold war on the US

Reuters, February 9, 2010: Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan. While far from representing fixed government policy, the open demands for retaliation by the PLA officers underscored the domestic pressures on Beijing to deliver on its threats to punish the Obama administration over the arms sales. The warnings from the PLA come after weeks of strains between Washington and Beijing, who have also been at odds over Internet controls and hacking, trade and currency quarrels, and President Barack Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama. China is likely to unveil its official military budget for 2010 next month, when the Communist Party-controlled national parliament meets for its annual session. The PLA officers suggested that budget should mirror China's ire toward Washington. Last year, the government set the official military budget at 480.7 billion yuan ($70.4 billion), a 14.9 percent rise on the one in 2008, continuing a nearly unbroken succession of double-digit increases over more than two decades - China PLA officers urge economic punch against U.S.

[QIQrrr]

Gryende misnøye i Kina:

The Sydney Morning Herald, February 27, 2010: China's top expert on social unrest has warned that hardline security policies are taking the country to the brink of ''revolutionary turmoil''. In contrast with the powerful, assertive and united China that is being projected to the outside world, Yu Jianrong said his prediction of looming internal disaster reflected on-the-ground surveys and also the views of Chinese government ministers. Deepening social fractures were caused by the Communist Party's obsession with preserving its monopoly on power through ''state violence'' and ''ideology'', rather than justice, Professor Yu said. Disaster could be averted only if ''interest groups'' - which he did not identify - were capable of making a rational compromise to subordinate themselves to the constitution, he said. Some lawyers, economists and religious and civil society leaders have expressed similar views but it is unusual for someone with Professor Yu's official standing to make such direct and detailed criticisms of core Communist Party policies - China insider sees revolution brewing

Eiendomsretten er det sentrale elementet:

The Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2010: Despite the central government's strident warnings and feeble interventions, the problem of officials stealing peasant land is reaching ever-greater heights. "Since June 2004, land disputes have become the critical problem of rural China," said Professor Yu, referring to the year when the central government abolished agricultural taxes and set local officials off in pursuit of a replacement revenue stream. "For tax protests, farmers directed their accusations to the county and township governments. But for land disputes they accuse city, provincial or even central governments," he said. "Most importantly, the number of large scale mass riots is growing." And gangsters are now shouldering the dirty work. "Today, more than 90 per cent of land disputes have a black society background," Professor Yu said. He believes the situation is reaching crisis point - China's land disputes at crisis point as revolutionary turmoil beckons, says professor

[QIQrrr]

New Tang Dynasty Television, March 2, 2010: Last Friday, the Chinese regime’s top legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress—or NPC—passed the National Defense Mobilization Law. The new law will give the regime and its military sweeping powers during social unrest and in times of war. Military mobilization is to be led jointly by the NPC Standing Committee and the Central Military Committee. China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, reports to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Once military mobilization is declared, businesses and other civilian resources—such as, banking, transport, health and medical, food production, construction, energy, and the media—will be required to follow the directives given by the National Defense Mobilization Committee. The mobilization law, which covers “all citizens and organizations,” means foreign companies may be called upon to serve the military needs of the Chinese regime - Chinese Regime Passes New Military Mobilization Law

[QIQrrr]

The Guardian, March 11, 2010: China wants to crack down on press freedom and introduce a new training system that requires journalists to train in Marxist and communist theories of news. Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, told the South China Morning Post that some mainland reporters were giving Chinese journalism a bad name because they were not properly trained. Under communist theories of journalism, media should support the leadership rather than operate as a watchdog. The initiative seems to be aimed at mainland journalists only. Chinese officials already routinely censor journalists, but Chinese media has become less restricted in recent years - China orders journalists to retrain in communist theory

[QIQrrr]

Irish Independent, March 9, 2010: China is in negotiations to build a high-speed rail network to India and Europe with trains capable of running at more than 322kmh within the next 10 years. By using the Channel Tunnel, the network would eventually carry passengers from London to Beijing and then to Singapore, according to Wang Mengshu, a senior consultant on China's high-speed railways. A second project would carry trains through Russia to Germany and into the European railway system, and a third line would connect Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and Malaysia. Mr Wang said Beijing was already in negotiations with 17 countries over the rail lines, which would also allow China to transport raw materials more efficiently. "It was not China that pushed the idea to start with," said Mr Wang. "The other countries came to us, especially India. These countries cannot fully implement the construction of a high-speed rail network and they hoped to draw on our experience and technology." China is in the middle of a €533bn domestic railway expansion project that aims to build nearly 30,600km of new railways in the next five years, connecting all its major cities with high-speed lines. Mr Wang said the route of the three lines had yet to be decided, but that construction for the South-East Asia line had begun in the southern province of Yunnan and that Burma was about to begin building its link. "We have also already carried out the prospecting and survey work for the European network, and central and eastern European countries are keen for us to start," Mr Wang said. "The northern network will be the third one to start, although China and Russia have already agreed on a high-speed line across Siberia - China builds railway to Europe

[QIQrrr]

Times Online, April 17, 2010: Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist. About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation. The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province. A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day - China tries to sterilise 10,000 parents over one-child rule

[Panther]

http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/world/china/5789-Peg-Not-Peg.html

23 April 2010 Peter Schiff

At the risk of beating a dead horse, let me reiterate my central thesis with respect to currency valuation: just as it is always better to be rich than to be poor, it is always better to have a strong currency than a weak one. Although this simple maxim puts me into conflict with much of the economic establishment, I hold its truth to be...well...self-evident.

The effect of current Chinese currency policy (which, despite Beijing's protests to the contrary, is manipulation pure and simple) is to make the U.S. dollar more valuable and the yuan less valuable. As a result, the benefits of manipulation accrue to Americans, not the Chinese. We get pay raises; they get pay cuts. Americans use their stronger dollars to buy products they would otherwise not have been able to afford. On the flip side, the Chinese people do without products that they otherwise would have been able to afford had their government not transferred their purchasing power to us.

The same effect is experienced with interest rates. In order to manipulate the dollar's value higher, the Chinese government has gobbled up more than $1 trillion of them.The Chinese then loan the dollars back to the U.S. through purchases of government and mortgage-backed debt, which reduces the cost of servicing our massive liabilities.

By the same token, if China were to stop manipulating the dollar higher, it would remove the props currently supporting our dysfunctional economy. American interest rates and consumer prices would soar, and our economy would collapse. Meanwhile, China would experience the opposite effect. Chinese consumer prices would fall, immediately raising living standards for average Chinese workers, whose higher real wages would finally allow them to fully enjoy the fruits of their labor.

[QIQrrr]

El Universal, April 19, 2010: The Chinese government confirmed on Tuesday that it granted two loans worth more than USD 20 billion to the government of President Hugo Chávez and that both countries signed oil and energy agreements. "We hope China and Venezuela to make joint efforts to implement these agreements and take bilateral relations to a higher level," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu - Renewed Chinese loan half funded in Yuan

UPI, April 23, 2010: China inaugurated a missile plant in Iran last month, even as the United States and its allies were pressing Beijing to support a new round of tough economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, Jane's Defense Weekly reports - China opens missile plant in Iran

[QIQrrr]

CBC News, April 30, 2010: India has banned telecom equipment from China citing national security reasons, heightening trade tensions between the two Asian economic giants. Indian officials say the ban was prompted by concerns Chinese telecom equipment could have spyware or malicious software embedded in it which could give Chinese intelligence agencies access to telecom networks in India. The ban and other regulations come less than a week after media reports that Chinese hackers had broken into the computer networks of India's security, defence and diplomatic establishment. China itself is involved in a tussle with Europe and the United States over Beijing's attempts to force foreign suppliers of computer security technology to disclose how it works. The United States and Europe have said Beijing's requirement that global technology suppliers reveal the inner workings of computer encryption and other security products to conduct business in China was protectionist - India bans Chinese telecom equipment