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Is China entering Japan's nightmare ? or already ?

In fact, one of the leaders, I forget who, knew that assets=liabilities+equity.
Liabilities are not part of an asset. Rather, liability is an opposite to an asset, as it drains the money from your assets.
 
Liabilities are not part of an asset. Rather, liability is an opposite to an asset, as it drains the money from your assets.

Dogen Z is right. He is telling B/S (Balance Sheet).
assets=liabilities+equity.
in terms of accounting.

Assuming you buy a house at a million dollar with your own cash (10%) + bank loan (90%), the house is your asset, but another face of your asset is your equity (10%) & liability from bank (90%).

You said Citi Bank's asset is valued at $2 trillion, but I don't know the composition of the asset. IF it is all Citi Bank's own equity, then that's fine. But usually they did a lot of leverage. And asset value is now shrinking, but amount of leverage remain unchanged. So the B/S may not be balanced.
 
I misunderstood Dogen Z's comment, then. I did not notice he was talking from the balance sheet perspective. As far as the leveraged amount, it is said the typical investment bank's leverage ration is 1 to 15 or 30. Putting down a dollar to borrow $15 or $30!.
 
Chinese exports drop in slowdown

China has reported a fall in exports for the first time in seven years.
BBC NEWS | Business | Chinese exports drop in slowdown

China's currency falls by record against U.S. dollar
Decline may signal official policy shift towards devaluation, analysts say

China's currency falls by record against U.S. dollar

In short, China tries to devalue its RMB against USD in order to boost exports because "export" is only hope for them to maintain their society.
However, this China's currency devaluation may be equivalent of beggar-thy-neighbor.

I personally believe that Japan's Deflation will never end as China is located as a "neighbour".
 
China is following the proven text book approach to be a wealthy country. Building the industrial base to sell goods to overseas. UK-->Continental Europe-->North America-->Japan all followed that (to the detriment to the 3rd world economies). China will dump about USD 600 billion to pump up its economy to weather through the current worldwide economic downturn.
 
The transnational corporations that have shut down factories in the US and outsourced them to China account for over 60% of China's exports to the USA. As a result the economy here is slowly collapsing and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

The Chinese are going to devalue their currency again to price undercut US and other foreign products. That means all other exporters will probably do the same in order to stay competitive.

That means US manufacturers can't compete and offshoring and outsourcing are going to boom again by the transnational corporations with what's left of our depleted manufacturing sector.

China and all exporters to the US (including US transnational corporations) are currency manipulators and cheats. Unless these cheats are stopped we won't have any economy left. The manufacturing sector in the US has seen the steepest decline since records began. The US does not produce textiles, furniture or toys anymore among other things. If allowed to, and I believe they will be allowed to in order to increase profits and the hell with the US worker and middle class, China and other exporters will take away what is left of what little we still produce here in the USA.

And now I read this from the International Forecaster:

In a sense we are screwed, but this could never happen without the aid and nod of US corporations and a wink by the US government, who have moved to China.
 

It cannot be helped as China is "much dependent" on exports. China's trade dependency is about double than Japan.

As far as I know, China needs to grow by at least 8% per year. Otherwise, the country cannot absorb new school graduates every year - some 8 - 10 million workforce per year. So if China's GDP growth slow down to 5% or less, serious social unrest must be expected.

Good Luck China.
 
Thank you for reporting the news. It may be easier for you if you just posted the web link for the articles.

Good Luck China.
I hope you are also wishing Japan for its luck. Japan's "wealth-building" economy depends on the world market.
 
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US has to do the right thing, which is to keep people employed through whatever way. China has to do the right thing, which is to stimulate more purchasing power in the domestic markets. Sadly I don't think either could do good job.
 
US has to do the right thing, which is to keep people employed through whatever way. China has to do the right thing, which is to stimulate more purchasing power in the domestic markets. Sadly I don't think either could do good job.
It would be counterproductive to spend whatever amount of money to keep people employed, as it is imperative to direct the limited resources and budgets to the areas where the results can be gained.

As far as China is concerned, it is in a unique position to have a prevailing control over its domestic economic activities by spending its public money (because it basically influences almost all of its domestics enterprises in China; I did not use the verb "control" because it would be difficult to have a full control over all of Chinese economic activities).

As China's economy counts on export businesses, the current global recession is not going to make it easy for China to cruise through. China can use its reserve of over USD 1 trillion to keep its economic expansion going for several quarters. But, without the noticeable economic recovery in the rest of G20 countries, China's economy may sputter to a grinding holt causing the internal unrest. If that happens, that would be very scary.
 

At the time of extreme economic uncertainty in the sense that we may go into a really serious recession, economic efficiency is not the priority anymore. I would say confidence is much more crucial. If I were the US I would defend dollars by any political means possible while depreciating it to give the corportate America more liquidity, and more jobs, and transfer part of the crisis overseas. Sure, Asia is not gonna be happy about it but so be it. As for the tax policy, they should really go easy on corporations who are actually hiring people.

China's reserve is going to help, but the our country has been doing dumb things when setting up the structure of the economy and now it is time for a change. Pay attention to peasants and lower classes in the city by building a better social security. So, they dare to spend their limited income on other things. And I believe this is the basis for a new stronger middle class to grow.
China is going through a tough time, but I'm glad to see the CCP is doing some thinking now.
 


I don't really understand the education system in China as well. We do not need that many college boys and girls, since a greater part of the jobs do not demand a college education. Either we learn that college is just college, and getting a degree is not really helping much, or we get more realistic and learn to respect blue-collar jobs again.
 
I'm glad we have someone here who knows China well. I think the China-Japan relationship will be increasingly important in the coming years. I look forward to more input from you and any others from China.

And I'm happy to see you're well versed in economics, too.
 


Because Chinese economy heavily relies on exports especially to US market, US recession damaged Chinese economy vey much. Thus Chinese government put emphasis on domestic market by .... government expenditure and forcing Banks to increase loans ..... until recovery of US economy.

However, those Chinese government economic stimulous measures are making property bubles.

In the meanwhile, US household net worth -- "the difference between the value of assets and liabilities" -- rose 5 percent from the second quarter..... This means that US households are repaying their mortgages to banks, not gaining assets. It also means that US households are decreasing spending.
In fact, the article says "In the third quarter, household debt contracted at a 2.5 percent annual rate from the prior three months, the largest fall on record, the Fed said. It was the fifth consecutive quarterly decline, reflecting steep declines in mortgage and consumer debt, such as credit cards."

Mortage reduction is not only seen in households, but also corporations. The article also points out "Business debt excluding financial institutions also fell at a 2.5 percent annual rate and the decline was widespread across credit market instruments, according to the report."

In short, US economy is likely to enter "Balance Sheet Recession" (All - households & businesses - is repaying their mortages and trying to balance their Balance Sheet. But if all makes repayment at the same time, economy goes to recession). This will result in a long term recession - the same lost decade as Japan ....

Unfortunately China's economic stimulous package will lose it breath soon as it is aimed until US economic recovery. This means China's property bubble is likely to burst soon, which is the same as Tower of Buble in Dubai.
 
The economies of China and Japan are highly symbiotic; China and Japan excels at opposite spectrums of the value chain and there are very few overlaps. In fact, China's rise affect the industries of South Korea much more than Japan.

and some anecdotal observations: Japanese brands (cars, electronics, cosmetics, fashion..etc) are very popular here; the elevators at the skyscraper I work in are made by Mitsubishi.
 
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This is very rare voice from "mainland China". Though I don't know what happens in Beijing right now, I would personally like to tell you that ....

"Japan is much tired in complying with Western economies/powers for more than a century, as China has grown sufficiently, we are glad to pass the torch to China. GO China, and of course Buy More from Japan !"
 

Beijing is a very dynamic city, but it's a developing city and there are definitely drawbacks-like pollution, dust, noise, and crazy drivers… but overall, It's a great city, especially if you have money.

As for purchases, I was talking to a co-worker the other day about cars; she and her fiancé wants to buy their first car-she wants a Mini Cooper, but he has his eyes set on a Subaru.

It's also a very interesting socio-economic story, as they are both from rural China and are now working hard in Beijing to achieve their career goals and personal dreams-the classic "北漂" story.
 
Unfortunately China's economic stimulous package will lose it breath soon as it is aimed until US economic recovery. This means China's property bubble is likely to burst soon, which is the same as Tower of Buble in Dubai.

Almost every person in Beijing I've talked to, the view from the "street" I guess, agrees that there's a huge property bubble in the capital.

For example, I work in the technology district and there are at least three skyscrapers under construction right now (all within walking distance of each-other) by state-owned construction companies (and probably with loans from giant state-owned banks) and armies of migrant workers working day and night, with sparks flying....I'm not sure if there's that much demand for commercial property, but it sure is an awesome sight to behold watching the construction army doing their work.
 

We've been hearing about this bubble since last summer, so I'm sure your government is paying close attention to it. Since the government can apply direct pressure to key areas of the economy, it has a greater chance of controlling the bubble than economies that depend wholly on market fundamentalism. I don't think anyone reasonable wants to see that bubble burst. That would cripple Asia including Japan. Anyway, thanks for giving us a local view of events in China.
 
qina a bubble waiting to burst according to James Chanos:

 
Adulado, that was one the stories I was referring to in my previous post. However, China still has a somewhat controlled economy, the government can pull off a gradual correction. At least, that's what other fund managers believe, including Mark Mobius of the Templeton Fund - and he knows a thing or two about Asian markets.

Anyway, this is the Japan Forum, I think we should keep things focused on Japan in this and other threads.
 
Dogen Z posted
Anyway, this is the Japan Forum, I think we should keep things focused on Japan in this and other threads.

Yes, but China's influence on Japan (and other countries who are major trading partners like the US) is immense. Add to that being geographic neighbors who share history and many things going on in China will affect what happens in Japan.

Back to conspiracy theories, I was surprised to read about Pachipro's financial fears. Seems like maybe you should read noted ecnomic/political commentator Thomas Friedman's somewhat dated (2000) 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree'. Globalization doesn't mean a world government nor should you lay all the blame on financial institutions and the Fed. Certainly more of the right kinds of financial legislation would avoid some of the excesses of banker's risk that have been employed with the certainty of taxpayer bailouts. The 'too big to fail' theories floated are rubbish and hedge funds that were way overleveraged (in some cases close to a hundrd to one) should have been allowed to go bankrupt.

Adddressing going off the gold standard, even prior to doing that we hardly had a one to one standard (amount of gold backing each dollar issued), so it was a bit of a myth that going off the gold standard caused any real economic decline. Economics is a lot more complex than many people realize, and capitalism has successfully replaced any and all economic systems that have proceeded it. Whether you agree with all of Friedman's conclusions, I don't see any better economic system being offered or displayed by the conspiracy guys. What the author goes at length to point out is that what he terms legal systems, financial, and supply and distribution systems have to be updated to fully integrate with a global capitalist system. Where many countries fail is assuming that a global system will help them without the preceding systems, which it won't (well it will, but with a lot of chaos and even more uneven wealth distrubution) . When you witnessed the chaos introduced in Russia after its markets were opened and to some extent Malaysia and even recently Dubai you begin to undertsand what he was reffering to. Free market money goes and is invested where people see value; simply building a wireless complex or high buildings alone won't bring investor confidence unless a real need is shown for these things and a supportive market wants them.

I see both Japan and China going over some financial bumps in the road together for different reasons; Japan grappling with an ageing and possibly shrinking # of workers due a fear of expanding their permanent foreign population, and China having problems effectively interlocking their system into a global economy as they slowly ease controls off of their rusting government industries and attempt to privatise the ones worth saving without setting off rural population riots. These two strange bedfellows are very interdependent; Japanese companies are still using Chinese factories to sell to the Chinese market (outside production is starting to be curtailed as China becomes a more expensive country to manufacture in) and China is trying to woo foreign investment and technology from Japan (and other places) to increase its competiveness in the world.

As to any nightmares, no I have been sleeping just fine recently.
 

This is true.

But from Japanese point of view, Vietnam has increasingly been attractive as mfg base for exports to China and others as China's cost is gradually becoming more expensive. In fact, Chinese mfgs are also going out of China for survival.

Plus, India is growing as another big market. China is now one of the markets, I think.
 

Economics, like the environment, is a global issue, but unless you can specify what role Japan has in it, there are better places to discuss it. I'd suggest the China Forum associated with this Japan Forum. It would be a more informative place to discuss primarily Chinese issues. If we don't pay attention to this convention, we run into the problem of everything depends on everything else, then this forum becomes a free-for-all and loses its value.
 
Dogen z posted
Economics, like the environment, is a global issue, but unless you can specify what role Japan has in it, there are better places to discuss it.

But since the OP's question related to Japan's bubble years, it's highly relevent to Japan, whether China is included or not. I see property bubbles in some of the hot zones in China (Beijing, Shanghai, and Guandong Province), just like ones in Japan centered especially in urban areas of Osaka and Tokyo from 1992 until 2001. I'm just not sure if the bubbles in China will fall as sharply as Tokyo's did and certainly the peak pricesin China probably won't be as high. Tokyo prime real estate at its peak had Ginza being worth more than California, and prices in Ginza for an average napkin sized piece of real estate were astronomical.
 
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