Quote :

"In a little-noticed mid-summer announcement, the Asian Development Bank presented official survey results indicating China’s economy is smaller and poorer than established estimates say. The announcement cited the first authoritative measure of China’s size using purchasing power parity methods. The results tell us that when the World Bank announces its expected PPP data revisions later this year, China’s economy will turn out to be 40 per cent smaller than previously stated. ......... Until recently, China had never participated in the careful price surveys needed to convert accurately its gross domestic product into PPP dollars. The World Bank’s estimates based on summary data from the late 1980s probably overstated China’s PPP gross domestic product even then. Up to now, the bank has revised its estimate very little. In the meantime, China has repeatedly raised the prices of food, housing, healthcare and a range of other non-traded goods and services. These reforms should have lowered the PPP adjustment, but the bank left it basically unchanged."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dee3a0d2-9218-11dc-8981-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

This revision would land China with an economy only 20% larger than that of Japan.

11/16/2007 4:20:03 PM

Wait, forty percent? That's nuts. A huge difference.

11/16/2007 4:24:25 PM

Nobody is afraid of China now, but rather china 10, 15 and 25 years from now.

11/16/2007 4:29:13 PM

How does this affect growth rate calculations, if at all?

11/16/2007 4:32:29 PM

that 40% was because they had counted gold farming in their GDP

11/16/2007 4:39:40 PM

Quote :

"This more accurate picture of China clarifies why Beijing concentrates so heavily on domestic priorities such as growth, public investment, pollution control and poverty reduction. The number of people in China living below the World Bank’s dollar-a-day poverty line is 300m – three times larger than currently estimated."

This quote was also very relevant, sorry I left it out.

I suspect this means that growth rate calculations all along have failed to factor out as much monetary inflation as was really taking place. This correction should result in a revision downward of current growth rates and a revision upward of current inflation rates.

11/16/2007 4:40:05 PM

How low will adjusted growth rates? The current numbers make China something of an economic miracle. Will this reverse that completely?

11/16/2007 4:45:21 PM

That is not how it will likely work out. More likely, they dramatically over-estimated China starting position back in the late 1980s. China is 40% poorer today than we thought it was, but we have no idea how poor china really was in the late 1980s, it could have been substantially (50+%) poorer than estimated back then, which would make the growth rate since then even higher than we thought. But we will never know which way it slides, more or less miraculous growth rates. Most likely it was a cross between the two: we under-estimated the poverty in the late 1980s and underestimated the annual inflation rate.

Either way, it will still be miraculous.

[Edited on November 16, 2007 at 4:57 PM. Reason : .,.]

11/16/2007 4:53:06 PM

No surprises here. In fact I expected a report like this to come along sooner or later.

When a country is 100% geared towards growth and there is enormous pressure from government to produce 10%+ growth results year after year, there is bound to be some exaggeration and shady accounting going on in order to make Beijing happy.

11/16/2007 6:31:24 PM

This report is interesting in the sense that it makes China's coming crisis look a bit more foreboding. China is up against both a geriatric time bomb, growing unrest in the countryside, and increasing demand for public goods by the urban sectors. Their government has only a limited time in building up a large enough economy to handle their own equivalent of the baby boomers while pacifying both a massive and poverty stricken countryside which feels left out in the economic growth and urbanites who want more quality of life investments in the cities. The fact that China is smaller than claims indicates that their economy has that much more ground to cover before any one of these crises come to a boil.

11/17/2007 2:47:04 AM

OH shit!!!

Does this mean I should pull money out from my mutual funds that partially invest in China??? If there is a correction, would that affect returns on investment???

Please help!!!

11/17/2007 4:41:02 AM

I had not considered that... I have no idea. Was the PPP GDP of China a strong factor in the pricing of your mutual funds? Either way, if I have heard about this then so has everyone in New York and elsewhere paid to dig up this kind of information. If your mutual fund was going to be hurt by this information then I suspect it shouls have already corrected.

Anybody of a different opinion?

11/17/2007 11:37:49 AM

nope.

11/17/2007 4:14:14 PM

yeah that's what you get for investing in COMMIES

11/17/2007 9:20:44 PM

They flexed their muscle recently in Hong Kong:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313244,00.html

Quote :

"Two of the Navy's top admirals said Tuesday that China's refusal to permit a U.S. aircraft carrier to make a Thanksgiving port call at Hong Kong was surprising and troubling. "This is perplexing. It's not helpful," Adm. Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters in a videoteleconference from his headquarters at Camp Smith, Hawaii. "It's not, in our view, conduct that is indicative of a country that understands its obligations as a responsible nation," he said, adding that he hopes it does not indicate a lasting blockage of port visits. The USS Kitty Hawk, which has its home port near Tokyo, was forced to return early to Japan when Chinese authorities at the last minute refused to let the warship and its escort vessels enter Hong Kong harbor."

11/27/2007 2:44:50 PM

^ It is a sovereign nation... I don't see what the problem is.

Quote :

""It's not, in our view, conduct that is indicative of a country that understands its obligations as a responsible nation," he [Adm. Timothy Keating] said."

Did Adm. Keating speak up at least like that, if not in a stronger tone, against Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret renditions, known cases of murder, rape, and torture committed by US troops, illegal Iraq war, etc?

If not, he can go to hell.

11/27/2007 2:52:57 PM

we are america we can do what we want durrr

11/27/2007 3:18:03 PM

I believe what made the Hong Kong incident such a pain was that it had already been preplanned but the Chinese backtracked last minute. Their last minute change of heart probably comes from one of two reasons: 1) the decision to deny the Americans port was executed by a regional official and then belatedly reversed when the central government figured out what was going on or 2) the Chinese didn't realize that this was one of the biggest holidays in the United States and tried to reverse it to prevent further weakening their image among the general American public.

11/27/2007 3:25:28 PM

It is a common courtesy to allow ships to port, regardless of who their owner is. Chinese freighters and Iranian warships are free to request docking at any port in the world, be it Europe or America. I don't understand why OEP believes American ships should not be granted the same courtesy.

That said, this could be simpler than it looks. Maybe at the last minute the port authority realized that there was too much traffic already in port to permit an entire U.S. carrier group on top of it.

11/27/2007 3:39:54 PM

not for another 100 years.... china has way too many internal issues to get too huge, they forcibly control their currency too much as well

this little thing called resentment, kinda grows in those kinda conditions

11/27/2007 3:57:22 PM

Quote :

"It is a common courtesy to allow ships to port, regardless of who their owner is. Chinese freighters and Iranian warships are free to request docking at any port in the world, be it Europe or America. I don't understand why OEP believes American ships should not be granted the same courtesy. "

Do you see how that paragraph is a contradiction in itself?

11/27/2007 5:08:17 PM

LoneSnark gives a reasonable answer and still you feel the need to be a little bitch...

11/27/2007 5:14:20 PM

You are too stupid to see the contradictions.

And I am the little bitch, right? Who is the one coming in here JUST to call others a bitch, without contributing at all in the 2-week old thread? You are sick.

11/27/2007 5:16:50 PM

what is your problem?

are you literally siting in a sandbox without any panties on?

11/27/2007 5:17:42 PM

joe schmoe/duke, apply your moderating powers and warn him/delete his trolling/whatever. just stop him from chit chatting up the thread. if he has any problem with me (is he jealous or what?), he can PM me.

11/27/2007 5:23:14 PM

i will and do troll the shit out of you

because you're just a clueless whiny cunt, and it's fun

but I wasn't trolling you here, at first

I was just pointing out how much of an unreasonable idiot you are

but, go ahead and cry to vacuum

it's not like anyone gives a shit

11/27/2007 5:25:45 PM

I don't see a contradiction either.

11/27/2007 6:06:48 PM

Quote :

"I don't see a contradiction either."

Quote :

"Did Adm. Keating speak up at least like that, if not in a stronger tone, against Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret renditions, known cases of murder, rape, and torture committed by US troops, illegal Iraq war, etc? If not, he can go to hell."

Not, uh, not really his lane there guy. I'm not saying that what you listed is justifiable, but no one is going to listen to an Admiral talking about land operations issues. It would be dismissed out of hand as inter-service rivalry and he would have shot his load over nothing. Pretty good job of linking two completely seperate issues though.

Quote :

"That said, this could be simpler than it looks. Maybe at the last minute the port authority realized that there was too much traffic already in port to permit an entire U.S. carrier group on top of it."

Very possible.

11/28/2007 3:16:34 PM

Quote :

"It is a sovereign nation... I don't see what the problem is."

Quote :

"That said, this could be simpler than it looks. Maybe at the last minute the port authority realized that there was too much traffic already in port to permit an entire U.S. carrier group on top of it."

From the article:

Quote :

"The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk and members of its strike group, including a nuclear submarine, were scheduled to dock in Hong Kong for a four-day visit. At the same time hundreds of sailors' families had flown to the city to spend the holiday with loved ones, dozens of Americans living in Hong Kong had prepared turkey dinners for those without relatives."

Again, what makes this such an incident is the fact that this was a scheduled docking, prearranged by the United States and Chinese governments months in advance. The fact that all these families went through the trouble of making flight arrangements to go to Hong Kong is evidence of that. Yes, it is true that the Chinese are in their right to deny the fleet docking last minute, but to do so last minute, knowing months in advance that the fleet was on its way and on an important American holiday and the carrier's last voyage to sea can easily be perceived as an intentional insult.

I understand if traffic was bad and they couldn't dock them immediately, but the way this article reads, they were turned away without explanation, again smacking of an insult. If they really were overwhelmed, why didn't they offer an explanation? That sort of comment would probably have been sufficient to pacify the Navy and certainly would have prevented this from escalating as it did.

Also, this was an even more interesting piece:

Quote :

"The first sign of trouble came November 20 when China refused to allow two US minesweepers -- the USS Patriot and the USS Guardian -- to enter Hong Kong for refuge from a tropical storm and to refuel. They refueled at sea and made it back to their home port in Sasebo, Japan without incident."

I think this one in particular unnerves the navy more, especially given that the United States and China have regularly extended this sort of courtesy to each other in the past. I don't know what's going on, but this is pretty serious.

I still believe that this was done as an intentional snub by some mid level military official and then was probably reversed by someone from the Central government. We've seen this sort of behavior with the whole spyplane mess. Given that both the US and China have been trying to improve military relations over the last several years, this continues to be very baffling.

11/29/2007 2:17:01 AM

Hey, if there's another major war, it could well be fought over Taiwan. Assuming the US is the current dominant power and China a rising power, some theories predict a confrontation is inevitable.

11/29/2007 10:34:15 AM

the us would be foolish to go to war over taiwan without the complete support of the rest of the world

11/29/2007 10:42:29 AM

Battlefield 2 has predicted the outcome of this thread.

11/29/2007 10:43:57 AM

Quote :

"the us would be foolish to go to war over taiwan without the complete support of the rest of the world"

Perhaps, but it's not as if we've never done anything foolish before. The loss of Taiwan would be a huge symbolic blow to any US president.

Ideally, though, the world will have a more reasonable system of organization before that happens. But I wouldn't count on it.

11/29/2007 10:47:28 AM

China snub over US ships deliberate

Quote :

"China has signalled that its recent snubbing of US warships wishing to enter Hong Kong had to do with Washington selling arms to Taiwan and honouring the Dalai Lama. A foreign ministry spokesman backtracked from a statement originally saying that the denial of permission for the ships to dock and refuel had been a "misunderstanding". The diplomatic wranglings follow the barring of a Thanksgiving visit last week by the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and several support ships. Days earlier Chinese authorities had also rejected a request by two US minesweepers seeking shelter in Hong Kong from a storm."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/43768259-6013-4C79-919C-F3E2252B5740.htm

Interesting.

11/30/2007 11:10:26 AM

So it has to do with Taiwan, huh?

Figures.

11/30/2007 11:18:06 AM