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The Chinese Overcapacity Puzzle

Aug 30, 2024

Several developments in recent years, from sustained renminbi appreciation to increasingly aggressive Western tariffs, should have eroded China’s global manufacturing dominance, but have not. Why has China’s share of global manufacturing exports continued to rise, and what might turn the tide?

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Joe Ryan Sep 8, 2024

Prof. Zhang Jun notes that "A significant share of the recent growth in Chinese public expenditure represents in-kind transfers to households, including spending more on education, health care, and pensions, as well as social services like cultural facilities."

This is another practice that the people of the U.S. should adopt.
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Shaun Narine Sep 1, 2024

I don't find Yu Fuxian's analysis convincing. There are lots of other differences between China and Japan -population size, overall importance in the entire world economy, the fact that China is a manufacturing and technological powerhouse with economies of scale that no other country in the world can match. Put simply, anything that can be built can be built more cheaply in China. China is also in the process of diversifying its economy into high-technology and China is leading in 90% of the high-tech fields. Recent American sanctions have actually given a significant boost to Chinese high-tech companies and development. It seems unlikely that China will simply decline into a service economy when the government has a lot of reasons for preventing that from happening. The issue of China's declining population is interesting, but as much due to the fact that declining population is a problem for all industrialized countries -it turns out that women don't choose to have many children when they have a choice. All of the problems that Yu identifies are fixable and manageable and possibly can even be turned into advantages. China is a not a passive actor and it has managed its rise and development better than any other state in human history, to this point.
- Aubergine Ashara Sep 2, 2024
  
  I agree with you analysis with the exception of your assertion that when given a choice women choose to have fewer children. While that MAY be true, I don't think we know because women have not been given a meaningful choice under capitalism. Instead, women are expected to work full-time to provide half (or more) of a family's economic support, AND bear children, AND be the primary caregiver for those children, AND be the primary caregiver for aging parents. I think if we implemented systems that actually supported women's ability to choose and meaningfully pursue the various, and the currently conflicted areas of their lives, women would likely choose to have more children than they now typically have, but fewer than the number of children they were forced to have, prior to the advent of birth control, and their freedom from legal subjugation as property of their husband. The lack of foundational access to critical supports such as health care, income for caregiving work, retirement security, housing, transportation, education, and food, is, in my opinion, as a woman, at the heart of why women are having fewer children. When coupled with the uncertainty and fear instilled by the rise of facism across the globe, including Trump,and the Democratic party's complete refusal to respond to the suffering of the working class, it is rather obvious why birthrates are falling--especially in the US. No woman wants to face having, much less raising children, in an environment of hate, fear and potential war!
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