China - o noua putere mondiala

[Rholes]

dar ganditi-va ca, cursul yuanului nu e liber, e aceeasi situatie ca la noi inainte de 89.
si mai ganditi-va cate firme isi au productia in china, si cat contribuie si ele la acest salt.

[skyblue]

si mai ganditi-va cate firme isi au productia in china, si cat contribuie si ele la acest salt.

Asta e perfect adevarat. Atrasi de roboteii aia care maninca si consuma mai nimic (niste orez acolo) si lucreaza in schimb ca apucatii , o gramada de firme multinationale deja contribuie la cresterea economica a Chinei.

Problema e cata vreme respectivii vor tot accepta sa traiasca cu putin . Pentru ca in momentul in care totul se transforma si acolo intr-o societate de consum gata cu excedentul asta imens al tarii.

[ablium]

I was in China last week. This is the first time for me to stay in my birth city for Chinese Lunar New Year (February 18th this year) since I left the city 29 years ago. My birth city is the capital of a coastal province. I estimate that more than 95% buildings that I knew when I was a child have been demolished. The city looks completely new. The fireworks and firecrackers lasted for three days during the Lunar New Year seasons.

I am amazed again by the speed of the city landscape transformation as every time I visit China. Number of cars has increased significantly comparing to what I saw two years ago. I personally drove a car for the first time in China. The road and expressway quality is as good as in the US. I am particularly impressed by the well grown and maintained plants along the side of expressways, which are rarely seen in the US. The expressway is not as busy as in US because China does not have as many cars as US now. Car parking space is a big problem in the city. There are all brands of cars, including European Fiat, Renault, Citron, and Peugeot, which are not seen in US because these car makers are not competitive in US market. I also saw sale stores of Ferrari and Maserati, the high class Italian sport car brands.

There is no problem to access this forum from China and connection speed is quite fast. The internet connection speed is 10 Mbit/second in the residential building that I stayed because optical fiber has reached the building.

I saw a slogan in both Chinese and English on the wall of an elementary school, which probably reflects the current spirit in China. “Set up a farsighted goal”, “Improve yourself with unremitting effort”. I felt that the slogan is interesting and so I took a photo of the building. See the attached file.

[ablium]

This is a video of Chinese ballet acrobat "Buterfly Lovers". Nice performance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_CUhQP2lJ4

[ablium]

February 18 this year is the Chinese Lunar New Year Day. It is the biggest holiday in China. This year is the year of pig in Chinese calendar system. So the image of pig is often shown in the pictures. The following link is a thread for the pictures of Dongguan, a medium size industrial city in Southern China. This city does not snow. All snow in the pictures of shopping mall is artificially made. I give you this so that you can get some feeling how people celebrate the New Year in other culture. Chinese do not have similar tradition like Chirstmas Tree, but they use lanterms a lot in the holiday. The pictures are taken in the parks, city squares, south shopping mall (the world largest), and many other places. Although the pictures are from a single city, atmospheres in other Chinese cities are similar in the Lunar New Year Season. This thread has over one hundred pages. The pictures for New Year start from page 83 to page 100.
http://forum.xinhuanet.com/detail.jsp?id=33742226&pg=84

--------------------


These lanterms are from Xiamen city. I was there in the New Year Day. . Please see both pages of this thread, it has very nice lanterms.
http://forum.xinhuanet.com/detail.jsp?id=40325610&pg=1

-------------------------------------------
New Year Lanterms in other cities
http://forum.xinhuanet.com/detail.jsp?id=40307674&pg=1


PigBrother: you may find some new pictures of pig for your avatar.

[Merlin]

Very interesting, Ablium. Can you upload some more picture with your birth city which you have visited ? I am more interested in seeing people, building, cars everything that is and looks normal of China cities!

[ablium]

I did not take a lot of pictures during my stay. Attached are a few of photos.
1. Car parking space is a big problem.
2. My 11 year old nephew in his home (an average home).
3. Dinning in a restaurant
4. Fireworks.

There are many pictures from my birth city taken by others. These photos are about two years old.


http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...ghlight=Fuzhou

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...ghlight=Fuzhou

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...ghlight=Fuzhou


My birth city is in relatively developed costal province of China. Inland provinces are generally less developed. My general feeling is that the infrastructures in coast provinces are world-class now, but the human quality does not improve as fast as economic development. The year I went to university (29 years ago), only 110,000 high school graduates are admitted into university in whole China because the Culture Revolution almost destroyed high education system in China. So people with age above 40 years are generally not well educated. But currently, a large percentage of high school graduates from cities can go to university for education. Near by my birth city, a univerisity town that will accommodate 100,000 students is under construction. There are many similar university towns underconstruction now. So I think that it will take one or two generations for Chinese to catch up the education level of developed nation.

[ablium]

Other pictures during New Year.

1-3, Construction everywhere.
4. Nice plant along street, which is also seen along expressways.
5. NightView

[Merlin]

Nice pictures !

I would really like to visit China, to see it's cities and culture ... but ... for now i am happy with some pictures

1. We have the same problem with car parking here in Bucharest . Except in Bucharest i think it's a far more complicated problem !

2. Your nephew is sweet . And an average home looks greater than an average home in Romania , that's for sure !

3 & 4 no comment .

on the second post , we can see an IN DEVELOPING CITY , which is really greaatt !!!! ( take a look romanian guys at their highways ! ) ... i am really gealous on that city , i would like it Romania to have some cities like that Anyway , what was the name of your birth city ?

[ablium]

I read that Bucuresti has over one million cars now. This density of car is definitely higher than almost all Chinese cities and probably only Beijing can come close to this number (Beijing has about 3 million vehicles now, but the city is much larger than Bucuresti.). In China, everything is much cheaper than in US except cars and gasoline. I think that Romania needs more investment in infrastructure construction. Romania should build a few expressways so that the country can get integrated and mobilized for economic development. This is 30 page thread about expressway in China
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...232957&page=30

China's infrastructure development really shocks me. Every home that I visited has about the same level of interior decoration, furniture, and other facilities as the average home in America. I have heard that some Japanese are puzzled for how Chinese can afford the housing standard, considering that average Chinese monthly family income is only a couple of hundreds of dollars. I have been to Japan and seen Japanese houses. I am not surprised why Japanese are puzzled. I went to home improvement stores and furniture stores in my visit to China. The stores have the same size scale as well as variety and quality of goods as in American stores. Of course, in the less developed regions of China, people do not have this kind of housing standard. Here is how Tokyo looks like

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=446924
(The author of thread is a little bit negative about Toykio.)

On the other hand, I think that Romania can also achieve an economic miracle in next a few years if everything goes right. When I came to Romania 28 years ago, I was amazed by the large scale of concrete buildings in Romania, although people may call those buildings as “commy blocks” now. At that time, China did not have those “commy blocks” even in the largest Chinese cities. Ceausescu did a lot of bad things, but I think that Ceausescu also did some good jobs in the urbanization and industrialization of Romania before 1980, at least much better than Chinese leaders then. It would have been better if Ceausescu had been more open to the west, but the international environment might not allow him to do so. Anyway, that is all history now. To get high speed of development, high saving rate and investment rate is a key. In review of all countries with high economic development rate, almost all of them have high saving rate. So spending a lot of money to buy BMW might not be a good idea.

America used to have most of skyscrapers in the world. Right now, China has more skyscrapers and high rise buildings than America. This is because most skyscrapers in US are office buildings except in a few cities such as New York City. China built a lot of high-rise buildings for residential uses, so the population density in the city is much higher. Most middle class Americans live in two-story houses in suburb and drive cars to work. This is why oil is so important to US economy.

My birth city is called Fuzhou, which is not internationally known. It is ranked about 20th city in China. This is a thread about the city ranking in China. Every former is bragging his/her city. It seems that there is strong sense of competitions among Chinese cities. It would be interesting if you could read Chinese.

http://forum.xinhuanet.com/detail.jsp?id=40325699&pg=1

(post 253 is New York City, the rest are all Chinese cities.)

Competition is good because it motivates people. Are there any competitions for economic performance among cities and counties (judet) in Romania? Competitions can put pressure for the government officials to perform.

[Merlin]

Unfortunately no , or at least as much as i know ... The problem with the density of cars is one of the biggest problems we have right now in Romania , Bucharest !!!
Unfortunately ( again ) , only Bucharest among all bigest cities ( towns ) is the most developed , all the others are really left behind in infrastructure and investments . Yes there are a few cities in the west of the Country but you can't really compare them with Bucharest . So , we can't really speak of a competition at this level ( only think that Bucharest has more than 2,5 mil habitans and the rest of the cities have most 300 k ! ) Bucharest is one of the biggest metropolitan area , social and economic , not only in Romania , but in EU itself , but that's really all that Romania can give at this moment ....



You are talking about a lot of things, and you are 100 % right ! I am amazed of how much history of Romania you know , especially about Ceausescu. Yes he made a lot of bad things , and yes he made a lot of good things too . Unfortunately because of the tranizition we've been in the past 17 years ( and still are ) WE ONLY LEFT WITH THE THINGS HE DID !!!!!! As of this moment ( 2007 ) i think we can call it a REBUILD of our nation . But only TIME WILL TELL!! ( a favourite quote from RED ALERT 1 - Einstein )

We need a lot of investments in motorways ( or highways as americans use to say ) , you're not saying something new, there are a lot of projects in development and their deadline will be close to 2012 ( Bucharest - Constanta ) and 2015 ( Bucahrest - Brasov ) so .... maybe there is a little hope for our country too , we'll see !

On the other hand at this moment WE ONLY HAVE A MOTORWAY , and this motorway has been build 18 years ago by ... yes, you guessed - CEAUSESCU !!!



I didn't quite understand all of this quote , maybe you can be more precise please .

To get high speed of development, high saving rate and investment rate is a key. In review of all countries with high economic development rate, almost all of them have high saving rate. So spending a lot of money to buy BMW might not be a good idea.

And funny, i've just received on my email a powerpoint presentation about a city ( or town ) called MACAO. If you want give me your email address so i can forward it , i think you'll love it as much as i did !

[ablium]

Originally Posted by Merlinboy

I didn't quite understand all of this quote , maybe you can be more precise please .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_rate.

An example, the money saved by Romanian workers in the west can be spent in several ways:
1. Buy BMW cars or other luxury cars.
2. Deposited in bank account, (the bank will find a way to invest)
3. Purchase homes in Romania, which will boost real estate construction investment
4. Buy stocks of corporations
5. Purchase capital equipment for industrial and agricultural production, and for providing service to people.

#1 is consumption and the rest are investment.

There are several counties and small cities in China, where many legal or illegal immigrant people worked oversea. People from these areas invested in all kinds of industries with the money they made oversea. Now, people from these areas are so rich that they form consortiums with their capital to speculate real estate price in other cities. Their capital is so big now that they can control the price of real estate in some cities.

One of key factor for China's high speed economic development is that China has very high savings rate. Savings rate of China is close to 50%, which provides ample financial support for infrastructure and industrial production investment.

Barney: I know that you feel that it is not fair for Chinese to have so high savings rate in the international competition. Actually, the Chinese government is encouraging domestic consumption now so that its economy can be less dependent on export.

Originally Posted by Merlinboy

And funny, i've just received on my email a powerpoint presentation about a city ( or town ) called MACAO. If you want give me your email address so i can forward it , i think you'll love it as much as i did !

Is it a project to imitate Chinese city Macao? Macao is a island city that Chinese "lent" to Portugal as colony in 19th century. It has returned to China as Special Administrative Region now. The city relies on gambling income. Its gambling revenue has exceeded gambling city Las Vegas in US last year. In Europe, you have a similar city, Monte Carlo. Chinese are fond of gambling. I hate this bad Chinese characteristic. But, if Romania wants to build a second "Monte Carlo" or Macao town, it might not be a bad idea from economic point of view.

A friend of mine who is investment business has recently visited Romania and Bulgaria. After he learned that I lived in Romania for several years, he told me that Bulgaria is better developed than Romania in the impression of his visit. From historical point of view, it is understandable that Romania is behind France or Germany. Man, if Romania falls behind Bulgaria, Romania government should feel a strong pressure! I read a geography book written in 1950s or 1960s when I was a child. Romania was said to be known to have petrochemical industry while Bulgaria was said to be known for growing roses (probably for use in French perfume.).

Coming back to the Romania's economy in 1970s and 1980s, Ceausescu had very big ambition to industrialize Romania. In an exhibition that I visited in Romania in 1980s, Romania showed all kinds of products, from electronic watches to helicopters. There were also many big projects on going in 1980s, such as hydroelectric dam in Danube River. The problem was that the international competitiveness was not taken into account when Romania made those products, but it was forgivable considering that world was still in cold war and globalization was still in cradle. The other problem was that Ceausescu mismanaged finance. In the 1970s, Ceausescu government got some loans from the West. Ceausescu government had difficulty to pay back those loans in 1980s while the government was still financing the big projects. As the results, the living standard declined drastically and consumer products were scarce in the 1980s (I witnessed the decline when I was there and I even saw the food shortage.). I assumed that Romania had very high saving rate then, but the decline of living standard caused strong dissatisfaction of Romanian people, which eventually led to the dramatic downfall of Ceausescu regime. However, what Ceausescu did is not completely without any merit. This statement is definitely not politically correct in Romania now, but I am interested in being correct rather than being politically correct. That is my shallow and amateur view of Romanian economic history in 1970s and 1980s as an outsider.

[low_level_superhero]

Barney: I know that you feel that it is not fair for Chinese to have so high savings rate in the international competition. Actually, the Chinese government is encouraging domestic consumption now so that its economy can be less dependent on export.

Well, they're not doing their best. The current account balance is.. well.. pardon my french, proper f****d. It is a problem of the entire world. They are not investing as much as they should (and I don't think that it is possible for the governement to deal with this). Tell me, what is the interest rate? What is the tax on stock exchange profits? What is the tax on dividends?

And don't get me started about the recent happenings in Shanghai.

[ablium]

China's interest rate is considered average in the world.
http://www.reuters.com/article/bonds...GLOBAL20070306

China does not have capital gain tax from stock trade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax


The rumor of imposing capital gain tax in China caused Shanghai stock market to drop nearly 9% in a single day last week, which triggered stock market in New York to drop about 4% a few hours later. But I think that it was a correction in Chinese stockmarket. Chinese stock market increased 125% last year after long time of depression. I personally lost more than 10% of my investment last week.

[low_level_superhero]

ablium, the interest rate is about 5,5%, and the inflation rate around 2%, so the the net rate is around 3%. In EU, Japan, US, is under 1%.

[ablium]

China's central bank has recently increased interest rate in order to reduce investment. In economic rule, lower interest rate generally encourages investment and promotes economic growth, but may cause inflation.

[low_level_superhero]

What a surprise...

[ablium]

What does it suprise you? Any economist will tell you this general rule of economics. Of course, interest rate is just one of many factors that affect economic growth rate.

[low_level_superhero]

No Ablium, I know the correlation between investments and interest rate. I did graduate in Finance. Twice.

China's central bank has recently increased interest rate in order to reduce investment.

What a surprise...

As in an irony vis-a-vis: they should invest more.

[Rholes]

do you know why they want to stop economic growth?
their electric system is on barier of colaps.
they growth could'nt be matched by the authorities in developing the infracstructure.