As a sixty-something, I heartily approve of the Korean practice here.
Korea used to be the same as Japan when it came to these practices - the IMF crisis in 97’ forced Korean industries to restructure and become a bit more Western in the way they thought about life-time employment and talent management while Japan chugged along through the post-bubble deflation.
Very much correlated to their diverging paths in their battle for consumer electronics supremacy.
China guy’s take:
Other takes:
Given the way the scene plays out, it seems very, very unlikely to be a sudden health issue. Look at the body language of everyone around the situation. There is surprise, confusion and shock - yes. But nothing resembling even the smallest bit of concern or polite sympathy you’d expect if someone suffered a health issue.
Hard to believe that this is anything but Xi sending a clear message both to China and the rest of the world.
Do I get a bit of Hey, don’t touch me! I don’t know you! from that pic?
So it looks like the man who was responsible for the controversial two-month Shanghai lockdown is now the second most powerful man in China. In any democratically-elected society, that would have ended his career, but since loyalty is the valued above anything else, Li Qiang gets a big promotion instead.
Also, it looks like there are no women at all on the 25-man politburo now. So much for any (illusion of) gender equality in the central government.
One has to wonder how long the Chinese people will put up with all of this. One line of thinking is “indefinitely;” we don’t really understand the dynamics of Chinese society and applying Western lenses gives us a distorted view. Another take though is “not for long;” the argument there is China’s increasingly active and important middle class is too tied in to the global zeitgeist to stay tied to a thousands year old vision of Han empire.
Personally, I have no clue. My gut tells me the Chinese system will not change any time soon though.
The BBC published a really good article about the recent history of China and Xi’s place in it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63225277
I wouldn’t expect any kind of popular revolution anytime soon, but I think that peoples trust in the government will decrease along with the slowing of the economy. In my experience in China, people already have little trust in their local governments due to the rampant corruption in the 90s and 00s. If there is little trust in the government, then there could be a big backlash to any military action in Taiwan if it’s not immediately successful (see Russia for a textbook example).
Now that he has secured power, we should see some major policies be introduced soon. My guess is there will be increased nationalization of key industries (maybe even tech sector) and tightened control over the economy. More rich people will be prosecuted and their capital added to the CCP’s coffers.
We are looking to leave Macau (though it looks like it’s going to take 1-2 years for my wife to apply for a US green card apparently, WTF?) as we dont see the situation here improving anytime soon. For my friends and in-laws here, I hope we’re wrong.
I’m hoping that China takes a page from the Ukraine war to see that propaganda and information blackouts cannot entirely mitigate the political risk from a military debacle, and that will lessen the attractiveness of a military option in Taiwan.
I’ve always believed that if China had pursued peaceful diplomacy, developed trust over the past 30-40 years, it could potentially have folded Taiwan back into its sphere. Perhaps I’m too optimistic, and that the only way to rule China is with an iron hand.
Well, that’s what Total War: Romance of the Three Kingdoms taught me!
I think this take on China by Fareed Zakaria is a pretty interesting and insightful perspective. China was already going to hit limits on continued growth, but Xi has been dismantling a lot of what got them this far already. Not that a China of this relative size wouldn’t still be a major world player, but it wouldn’t be the total shake up of the world order that people have been predicting for quite some time now.
I think Fareed is really far off the mark with the Japan comparisons. Real estate and stock trends may track, but China is running military drills to blockade and invade an effectively sovereign neighbor and de facto US ally. China’s military is worried to match or exceed to US within the region within this decade. China is antagonistic against most political values the US cares about, and has repeatedly broken assurances related to those values. China’s GDP growth may be slower, but is still very fast for it’s scale and it’s military growth is near 3x faster. China is a single party dictatorship! Besides real estate and demographics, pretty much every other notable feature about China is far different or even the opposite of Japan.
A better comparison is Russia. Russia lacks a strong and growing economy (so, much worse off that China), but it’s military and ambition make it a true global menace. It’s not the exact growth rate, it’s the absolute size of the military and the intentions and gambits of leadership. It’s the leadership, stupid.
He probably could have clarified a bit more, but I don’t think he was trying to say they were exactly comparable. But that was just my takeaway, I haven’t read his article that I assume contains more detail. Just used Japan as an example of how you can’t just predict the future of growth of an economy via naive extrapolation of the last few decades. And I think it’s worth considering that China’s days of real growth are probably over based on a number of factors. Most notably that Xi seems intent on continuing to roll back their successful market economy.
Obviously they are still a big threat at their current size. They’ve made it pretty clear of their intentions with Taiwan, and I’m not sure anyone would really be in a position to stop them if they really went all in on an invasion.
That said, I think it’s a very worthwhile counterpoint to the frequent and very dire predictions about China’s future. The bit about scaling back the belt and road investments was news to me. That seems like a pretty drastic change, especially after a decade+ of hearing about how China was going to exert their influence all over Asia and Africa and into Europe. Could they still end up a global superpower? Sure. But it’s more likely they end up a very strong regional power.
Let’s be real - the US helped set this in motion with the One China Policy and their support of the PRC taking over Taiwan’s spot as the official UN representative back in the 70s.
It’s a bit circular logic to fault China for not treating Taiwan as a sovereign country when the entire US policy rests on not recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign country.
His point about the low birth rate is something that is extremely relevant but isn’t talked about enough. Because China’s mandatory retirement ages are so low (60 for men, 50-55 for women), older people put a huge economic strain on younger generations. This has been a known issue for decades already, but the central government stood fast to their policies and hoped that fast growth could compensate. However, now that the economy is slowing and birth rates have dropped so low, this issue is going to get worse. The obvious solution seems like raising the retirement age, but this would further worsen the job crisis for younger people.
What goes around, comes around I guess. We hoped we could both placate Beijing and support Taipei, and guess what? It don’t work that way.
There is some political ambiguity there that puts Taipei in a suspended limbo state until China decides to invade. I think a peaceful unification is completely off the table because Taiwan does not see itself at all with being part of The People’s Republic of China, which is just another potential occupier in a long list, and this is after they have finally achieved democratization.
The Spansih, The Dutch, Chinese Pirate Lords, The Japanese, The Kuomintang, CCP…
I don’t think the Taiwanese really view the Chinese as occupiers since (according to Wikipedia) more than 95% of the population is Han Chinese!
That said, the history of Taiwan has been twisted so much by the CCP that I think most people believe that it was controlled by the Chinese government going back several millennia. In reality, the Dutch and British controlled the island before any Chinese emperor did.
As for the US policy towards China in the latter 20th century, it’s important to remember how much the US economy benefited from the cheap manufacturing in China that came as a result. Sure, it was a bit naive in retrospect, but I can understand why it made sense at the time.