TSLA showing cracks?
11-30-2023
, 09:53 PM
11-30-2023
, 09:54 PM
12-13-2023
, 06:13 PM
12-20-2023
, 05:04 PM
Quote:
This one I find totally amusing. I follow Chinese Business news closely. in 2023 .. China has about 26,000 miles of High speed rail. The amazing thing is that it would be better if China had ZERO miles of high speed rail and had their old rail lines back.
Of the 26,000 miles, I estimate 6-10,000 miles are useful and productive rail lines.. Bejing to Shangahi etc.
..the other 16,000-20,000 miles are a loadstone around China's neck. that gets used at capacity 2 weeks every year. (lunar new year) They have annual interest and maintenance cost that are part of the Malinvestment that was used to inflate China's miracle growth of +10% for years. There are stations in ghost cities that never get used because nobody lives there!
Those old rail lines were at capacity for 50/52 weeks of the year and for those key 2 weeks .. were like a madhouse. Now they have high speed rail everywhere that gets used at capacity 2 weeks every year. (lunar new year) and completely underused for the rest of the year.
Of the 26,000 miles, I estimate 6-10,000 miles are useful and productive rail lines.. Bejing to Shangahi etc.
..the other 16,000-20,000 miles are a loadstone around China's neck. that gets used at capacity 2 weeks every year. (lunar new year) They have annual interest and maintenance cost that are part of the Malinvestment that was used to inflate China's miracle growth of +10% for years. There are stations in ghost cities that never get used because nobody lives there!
Those old rail lines were at capacity for 50/52 weeks of the year and for those key 2 weeks .. were like a madhouse. Now they have high speed rail everywhere that gets used at capacity 2 weeks every year. (lunar new year) and completely underused for the rest of the year.
but you absolutely do not know what you're talking about and are repeating a bunch of nonsense
the "ghost cities" are lies
china plans 10-20-30 years in advance
it builts things in anticipation of usage and not for immediate needs
in the late 90s you saw them build out a modern highway system that was empty and there were tons of articles of "ghost highways"
at the time they began to build those massive national highway systems, the city traffic was literally like this
they saw the trends, understood the need and went for it, knowing full well that they would be run at under capacity for a few years as automobile ownership caught up
china is also leading the self driving car push, mostly behind heavy investment towards robo trucking
so when china builds a highspeed rail network, they aren't building it for right now, they are building it for the next 50 years. There are spots where they understand "hey there's nobody here now and not many jobs, but it makes logistical sense to run a bunch of new rail lines through here so if we put in a station here then it's be cheaper to ship supplies for businesses who would open up there, which is turn will bring in people to work there, etc etc
the end result is for a few years you have this absurd gargantuan station which doesn't really serve too many people
all those articles about "ghost cities" etc are written by idiots who didn't understand the long term planning behind it and every single one of those wound up as vibrant populated centers
it's the field of dreams, if you build it, people will come - americans don't understand this so you get a young journalist sent abroad and he's like "wow i can win a pullitzer pointing to this new urban development that is only 10% occupied because it is brand new"
12-21-2023
, 07:56 PM
Quote:
sounds like everyone's conflating timeframes, from a few years, to 10-30 years, to forever.
seems mf's saying 30 years is an unreasonably long time to wait for usage to catch up, while rick is saying china's smartly playing the long game.
i tend to lean toward the latter as a general matter, but am uncertain on this issue for the same reason i'm skeptical of tesla... i think there's a lot of room for disruption in optimal transportation modes in the coming decades.
that said, i'd appreciate if western democratic politicians could undertake projects that have payoff windows longer than 4 years out (if we're lucky).
seems mf's saying 30 years is an unreasonably long time to wait for usage to catch up, while rick is saying china's smartly playing the long game.
i tend to lean toward the latter as a general matter, but am uncertain on this issue for the same reason i'm skeptical of tesla... i think there's a lot of room for disruption in optimal transportation modes in the coming decades.
that said, i'd appreciate if western democratic politicians could undertake projects that have payoff windows longer than 4 years out (if we're lucky).
what happens is for whatever reason, a region will be targeted for development - 100% of units are sold right away because everyone believes it'll be a good investment and can sell later even if they have no intention of relocating
it could take 5-6 years just to finish the construction of all the residential and commercial sections and schools and police stations - it'll then take another 2-3 years before parents want to send their kids to the schools there because they want the schools to hit their stride and have qualified teachers, not be living there in the first year where they may have had to cut some corners to ensure they had enough staff
likewise, people are slow to move in when it's new and there's not much going on yet, why move to your new home when there's not many dining options in walking distance yet, why not just wait another year before you make the official move and be more comfortable in the meantime
in the west we don't do this kind of holistic planning - it's unheard of, so some journalists see something in year 4 of an 8 year construction plan and have no fundamental understanding of what is really happening but see block after block of mostly empty buildings and then believe it's all fake and society is on collapse
i know a bunch of chinese people who owned dozens of homes and would just let them sit empty because if they were previously lived in by renters the value drops dramatically - nobody wants to buy a home someone else outside their family lived in, it's a cultural thing
they will sit on those homes knowing that a new school has already been approved to be built in 6 years or that a new subway line will be built with a nearby station in 4 years etc and then sell
chinese have incredibly patience
but.. the idea of long standing "ghost cities" is just a lie
hence why he won't be able to name any specific ones, only talk about it in the abstract
the population itself may not be growing recently, but they just eliminated the one child policy and a lot of pent up baby desire is happening with tons of kids, even old couples who's first child is now in their 20s are going to fertility clinics
also a massive amount of the population lives among many others in cramped/dorm style housing
the vast majority of the country is still living subsistence farming lifestyles working plots of land so small it can barely provide enough to subside and live in wretched conditions - that's why they'll happily go to the city, live in a factory dorm and work 14 hour shifts every single day because it's better than staying in their hometown
millions of chinese literally live in caves - the demand for these developments is real and only someone who leaned too heavily on some dumbass journalists would believe otherwise
why i first returned to Beijing from North Africa, I was living in a brand new development about 2 hours northeast of Beijing
i was living there because it was incredibly cheap to live there at that time, the roads were empty, most store fronts were empty - it was a literal ghost town - within a year all those had filled up and it was a vibrant place and you'd never know that just a year prior it looked post apocalyptic
Last edited by rickroll; 12-21-2023 at 08:10 PM.
12-21-2023
, 08:39 PM
fair enough, i just want to say that most coverage on china is written by an idiot who can't even speak the language and is looking to make a name with a big story
and the key to getting good coverage is to play into tropes
freedom loving people who are oppressed, terrible pollution, ghost cities, etc
it's even been absolutely proven that a lot of media puts grey filters on their photos and videos of china
here are is the same video from the bbc side by side, one for a Chinese audience and one where they added the grey filter for coverage abroad - it's stranger than fiction
most media coverage of china makes me spit up my milk with how incredibly wrong they are in their interpretation and coverage
mindflayer, i actually like and respect you and follow your thread - but you've been sold a bunch of bs - when dealing with china it's best to cut out generalities and try to deal with specifics - that helps underline whether or not it's actually happening, for example, try to find an actual ghost city, a specific one rather than discuss the vague idea of it happening
like all that covid coverage of people being welded into buildings was all nonsense, what they were doing was trying to get people to do contact tracing which meant scanning a qr code whenever the entered a building - to make this easier to manage, they would close the many entrances and exits to each building so there was only one - since many of those doors were never intended to be locked, they didn't have any locks on them and since people are all selfish they would continue using those doors - i personally ignored those and always used the closest and most convenient entrance until my building management also found a way to install some locks - in some case they decided it was just easier to weld it shut and replace it with a new door later
absolutely nobody was being welded into a building, that made zero sense - yet that's the narrative media ran with
same thing with instead of calling them markets they used the term "wet market" because it sounds less sanitary - wet market is not a chinese thing, it's an english word not found in chinese, an industry term meant to distinguish between something like a whole foods which sold perishable goods and something more like a grain elevator which was used to store corn for over a decade
a whole foods is a wet market - but it sounds ickier and gross so that's what they went with
and the key to getting good coverage is to play into tropes
freedom loving people who are oppressed, terrible pollution, ghost cities, etc
it's even been absolutely proven that a lot of media puts grey filters on their photos and videos of china
here are is the same video from the bbc side by side, one for a Chinese audience and one where they added the grey filter for coverage abroad - it's stranger than fiction
most media coverage of china makes me spit up my milk with how incredibly wrong they are in their interpretation and coverage
mindflayer, i actually like and respect you and follow your thread - but you've been sold a bunch of bs - when dealing with china it's best to cut out generalities and try to deal with specifics - that helps underline whether or not it's actually happening, for example, try to find an actual ghost city, a specific one rather than discuss the vague idea of it happening
like all that covid coverage of people being welded into buildings was all nonsense, what they were doing was trying to get people to do contact tracing which meant scanning a qr code whenever the entered a building - to make this easier to manage, they would close the many entrances and exits to each building so there was only one - since many of those doors were never intended to be locked, they didn't have any locks on them and since people are all selfish they would continue using those doors - i personally ignored those and always used the closest and most convenient entrance until my building management also found a way to install some locks - in some case they decided it was just easier to weld it shut and replace it with a new door later
absolutely nobody was being welded into a building, that made zero sense - yet that's the narrative media ran with
same thing with instead of calling them markets they used the term "wet market" because it sounds less sanitary - wet market is not a chinese thing, it's an english word not found in chinese, an industry term meant to distinguish between something like a whole foods which sold perishable goods and something more like a grain elevator which was used to store corn for over a decade
a whole foods is a wet market - but it sounds ickier and gross so that's what they went with
Last edited by rickroll; 12-21-2023 at 08:45 PM.