Results for “china”
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*Russia and China*

Authored by Philip Snow, the subtitle is Four Centuries of Conflict and Concord.  This book is excellent and definitive and serves up plenty of economic history, here is one bit from the opening section:

The trade nonetheless went ahead with surprising placidity.  Now and again there ere small incidents in the form of cattle-rustling or border raids.  In 1742 some Russians were reported to have crossed the frontier in search of fuel, and in 1744 two drunken Russians killed two Chinese traders in a squabble over vodka.

I am looking forward to reading the rest, you can buy it here.

Should we limit capital flows from America to China?

I am not thrilled with these policy proposals:

President Joe Biden is expected to issue an executive order next month restricting US investment in China, in part over concerns about US national security. Those concerns are valid, but the move would cede far too much arbitrary power to the federal government over capital flows and economic activity.

The policy will reportedly cover semiconductors, AI and quantum computing, and on the supply side it applies to venture capital, private equity and some technology transfers and joint ventures. It’s reminiscent of the proposed ban on TikTok. You can debate whether a bill that said “Ban TikTok” — and little else — would be a good idea. In reality, what was proposed would potentially criminalize a broad swath of internet activity in America.

Restrictions on capital flows to China would run into similar problems. On the surface, they would be addressing commonsensical national-security issues. Underneath, they would give the executive branch carte blanche to both punish foreign nations economically and to restrict domestic investors.

And this:

All said, it would be better for the US to devote resources to limiting Chinese espionage, or upgrading US supply chains and weapons systems. When it comes to relations with China, blocking its access to key weapons systems should be the priority.

Here is the full Bloomberg column.

The One-Child Policy and Intergenerational Mobility in China

We examine whether and how the world’s largest population planning program, the One-Child Policy, has shaped intergenerational mobility in China. Using a dataset with 2,096,798 childparent(s) pairs combined from various rounds of ten separate national household surveys, we leverage exogenous variation in fine rates imposed for One-Child Policy violations across provinces to study causal impacts of the One-Child Policy on intergenerational persistence. Using a continuous difference-in-differences approach, we find that for cohorts born between 1980 and 1996, the One-Child Policy reduced persistence in intergenerational income, education, and social class, comparing to those born prior to 1979. We estimate that the overall effect of the One-Child Policy fines was to reduce persistence in intergenerational income, education, and social class by 28.1%, 48.7%, and 24.8%, respectively. Analyzing mechanisms, we find that the One-Child Policy boosted China’s intergenerational mobility by diminishing elite family heirship, concentrating resources for lower-income families, and decreasing returns to education. The One-Child Policy has brought about a significant socioeconomic reshuffle that has reshaped the role of China’s longstanding class solidification.

That is from a recent paper by Shanthi Manian, Qi Zhang, and Bin Zhao.  Via Linghui Han.  Might some similar results be true for any other low-fertility societies?  Or are the environments too disparate?

My ChinaTalk podcast with Jordan Schneider

Here is the transcript, here is the podcast.  Excerpt:

Jordan Schneider: You mentioned growing up reading classic novels and scholarship. What do you think will be relevant and not relevant about that sort of stuff in our new AI world?

Tyler Cowen: I suspect the classic texts will re-emerge in value. Reading Plato, Kant, or Adam Smith gives you a sense of a vision and big-picture thinking that the ais won’t be able to give us for some while — maybe never. [If] simply scanning the internet for facts, the AI might give you a very good digest — which you’ll consume in less time — and you’ll then seek out the thing the AI can’t give you at all.

That will, again, be radically original big-picture thinking.

Recommended, interesting throughout.  We also talk about education, therapy, China, the person I envy most, the demand for pets, working for the Aztec empire, my own secret book project, and much more.

Why did China do such a flip-flop on Covid?

After the so-called “Zero Covid” experiment, China now reports that 37 million people are being infected each day.  What ever happened to the Golden Mean?  Why not move smoothly along a curve?  Even after three years’ time, it seems they did little to prep their hospitals.  What are some hypotheses for this sudden leap from one corner of the distribution to the other?

1. The Chinese people already were so scared of Covid, the extreme “no big deal” message was needed to bring them around to a sensible middle point.  After all, plenty of parts of China still are seeing voluntary social distancing.

2. For Chinese social order, “agreement” is more important than “agreement on what.”  And agreement is easiest to reach on extreme, easily stated and explained policies.  Zero Covid is one such policy, “let it rip” is another.  In the interests of social stability China, having realized its first extreme message was no longer tenable, has decided to move to the other available simple, extreme message.  And so they are letting it rip.

3. The Chinese elite ceased to believe in the Zero Covid policy even before the protests spread to such an extreme.  But it was not possible to make advance preparations for any alternative policy.  Thus when Zero Covid fell away, there was a vacuum of sorts and that meant a very loose policy of “let it rip.”

4. After three years of Zero Covid hardship, the Chinese leadership feels the need to “get the whole thing over with” as quickly as possible.

To which extent might any of these be true?  What else?

China loan fact of the day

Three of the largest recipients of China’s rescue lending have been Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Argentina, which together have received as much as $32.83bn since 2017, according to data compiled by AidData, a research lab at William & Mary, a university in the US.

Other countries receiving rescue lending from Chinese state institutions included Kenya, Venezuela, Ecuador, Angola, Laos, Suriname, Belarus, Egypt, Mongolia and Ukraine, according to AidData, which did not provide details for these countries.

Here is more from the FT.  I don’t actually see this ending well.

China fact of the day

China’s carbon emissions fell almost 8 per cent in the April-to-June quarter compared with the same period last year, the sharpest decline in the past decade, according to climate research service Carbon Brief.

The fall in emissions reflects a dramatic slowing in Chinese economic growth caused by large-scale coronavirus lockdowns and a crisis in the heavily indebted property sector. It was the fourth consecutive quarter in which emissions have fallen in China, the world’s biggest emitter.

Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which compiled the data for Carbon Brief, said there had been a drop of 44 per cent in the number of construction projects started and a 33 per cent fall in those completed during the second quarter.

Here is more from the FT.

China’s Heat Wave

Axios: The extreme heat and drought that has been roasting a vast swath of southern China for at least 70 straight days has no parallel in modern record-keeping in China, or elsewhere around the world for that matter.

… “I can’t think of anything comparable to China’s heat wave of summer 2022 in its blend of intensity, duration, geographic extent and number of people affected,” meteorologist Bob Henson, a contributor to Yale Climate Connections, told Axios.

China targeted the Fed to build an informant network

Duh, but good to see this coming out in the WSJ.  Excerpt:

China tried to build a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve system, at one point threatening to imprison a Fed economist during a trip to Shanghai unless he agreed to provide nonpublic economic data, a congressional investigation found.

The investigation by Republican staff members of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that over a decade Fed employees were offered contracts with Chinese talent recruitment programs, which often include cash payments, and asked to provide information on the U.S. economy, interest rate changes and policies, according to a report of the findings released on Tuesday.

If you are surprised by any of this, you have not been paying attention.  Good work by Kate O’Keefe and Nick Timiraos.

China revelations of the day

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons.

And:

In 2020, Congress approved $1.9 billion to remove Chinese-made Huawei and ZTE cellular technology across wide swaths of rural America. But two years later, none of that equipment has been removed and rural telecom companies are still waiting for federal reimbursement money. The FCC received applications to remove some 24,000 pieces of Chinese-made communications equipment—but according to a July 15 update from the commission, it is more than $3 billion short of the money it needs to reimburse all eligible companies.

Here is the full story, vtekl.

China new product fact of the day

On 10 July, in Guangdong Shunde, MBG released “Dressed Air Conditioning”, which was described as the product of the first global 3C certification of cold-wearing equipment with a compressed mechanism.

What do you mean, “dressed air conditioner”? – Put air conditioner on your body, wear it on your body. Its three cores are a vest, a mini-direct compressor, and a battery, but it’s easy to say, it’s got a lot of technology in it. The miniature compressors can reduce the temperature to 16°C in three minutes, weighing just 485g, less than a kilogram. The total weight of the equipment is about five pounds, which is equivalent to keeping the lady with the smallest number in the gym away from her waist.

(What does that last segment mean?)  Here is the full story, via Anecdotal.