Thread by @muralipiyer

I am not an economist, but this is what i feel is happening around us.

This is start of a rant.

Pandemic induced trade disruption is a reality.
It’s timing though is either miraculous or impeccable, based on which side of the conspiracy theory aisle you prefer.

Pre-pandemic, everything wasn’t really that rosy. And this is around the world.

3. Stuff like steel, oil, etc were already under some kind of pressure.
A lot of muck was getting stirred in China.

Global gdp growth data in pic. The last peak was the 4.3% in 2009. In 2019, it was a mere 2.3%. People were just hoping that 2020 would be better.

4. Pandemic had came at perfect timing. There was now no pressure on the big money losers to justify their sales pitch.
If you look at any annual report in 2020 till date, everyone has blamed pandemic in one form or other to justify their low EBIDTA margins.

5. Even the folks who magically ended up doing well(like those broking firms) also added a big warning note that this was just a one off earning boost.

6. I like the conspiracy theory that this pandemic was handcrafted by someone and it’s now used as a kind of mirror to highlight all things that were done wrongly in the past.

7. Just look at the outsourcing industry.

From outsourcing everything from underwear to latest gadgets, the giants suddenly realised that they need a China Plus One strategy.
I mean, really! WTF was Trump rhetoric all about.

8. Trump was a buffoon. But he was a smart buffoon. He understood populism pretty well. He knew how to cater to his choice of voters.
Everything he did thus accidentally ended up highlighting what was wrong with the status quo.

9. If the pandemic was not there, the post-Abraham Accord middle east would have been at a totally different level.
Saudis, especially #MbS, are pretty smart people, who know how to hold on to power very well. They already know that a Sunni + Jewish temporary alliance is good.

10. Xi Jinping already knows pretty well that CCP is already in pretty deep mess.

I mean, everyone knows the communist regime is corrupt.
Chinese have been corrupt even during the Qing dynasty. Corruption per se is not new, but even CCP chairman becoming corrupt is unexpected.

11. Jiang Zemin had only one drawback. He was not ruthless enough to declare himself as Chairman for life.

But, he sort of made up for it in terms of the money he and his large network made. That’s something even the “most exalted leader” hasn’t figured out yet.

12. Whenever his ego gets hurt, Poo starts a purge. It’s his ruthless purges that has made the poo “exalted”.
Jack Ma and many other biz leaders were hit only because eleven realised that his predecessor has more actual power than him.
Every attack is just an extortion racket

13. Now, Xi has real problems in one side.
After decades, CCP might have thought that they are already the TINA. But, despite all restrictions, people still are not that keen about maintaining the CCP.
There had already been innumerable silent revolts.

14. Places where CCP thought that force will work, have all only failed.
ETIM can take back East Turkestan anytime they get a small chance. That’s despite the huge infusion of party cadre in that province.
Tibet might have had last revolt decades ago, but all is not well there.

15. Then there is that thing in Manchuria, occupied Mongolia and the mountains in the south. Yunnan province is a lot like some Estonia. The number of Han there won’t matter when those people wrest independence. Guangxi is actually Zhuang land.

Even among Han, CCP is not good.

16. The CCP has relied upon cliches a lot.
They think that if something had worked in the past, it will work in the future as well.
Hukou is used as a tight leash to control even the Han population.

The present faking of census data is another sign.

17. China has one of the worst demographic problems in the world right now.
They have no NHS or even a horribly broken Obamacare.
The social security net for even those who fully comply with the party demands is still essentially nonexistent.
On top of that is this lack of births

18. According to one estimate, the Chinese population may not be more than 1.26 billion; making India with 1.33 billion people the most populous country.
YES! Chinese just added 12% extra population to make the numbers look good.
They probably have an actual TFR of 1.2, not 1.8!

19. What people figured out is Chinese probably have a bogus one-sixth toddlers getting manufactured in stats every year.

The real demographic imbalance is actually far worse than what the Chinese statistics actually shows.

Population has already peaked a couple of years ago.

20. Then there is the real estate mess. Actually, I should call it as it is. This is basically a bride shortage mess.
In China even otherwise, the dowry is paid by groom to the bride(a lot similar to the arabs).
It was Deng Xiaoping who introduced one child policy in late 70s.

21. Of course, the thing that many dont understand, China’s TFR had already started falling and falling fast. The Deng’s economic growth only managed to bring down TFR from 3 to 2. When Jiang Zemin became party president, TFR was already 1.73 officially. End goal had reached then

22. So, just imagine how much damage to the population would have already been done in Jiang Zemin’s two decades of rule. And then Xi Jinping took over, to do some kind of impossible rescue.
More than 3 decades, the Han population have had only single child families.

23. A vast Han population has endured the pain of a known person forced to undergo forceful abortion even as late as 8 months into pregnancy.
When you hear that some party local boss in one province kicked at the pregnant stomach leading to immediate miscarriage, it’s not pretty.

24. Deng started something. But greedy people in the west lapped up this nice opportunity to exploit chinese underpaid semi-slaves to manufacture everything for them to sell at a insane margins.
Let’s never forget: the present over dependence on China was triggered by greedy West

25. Americans and Europeans lost job. But they had access to cheap products from China.

26. Chinese eventually started earning more.
By late 2000s, china was no longer the cheapest destination.
By early 2010s, everyone had already acknowledged that they are in China for convenience.

27. The pandemic forced everyone to wake up from Sunk Cost fallacy.

China was no longer a profitable outsourcing destination. They are too far away from global supply routes. Their employee cost arbitrage is practically negative. And, there is no major benefit in sticking to CCP

28. Let’s be very honest.
The reasoning behind china entry a decade or two ago, and the present china exit is the same: profits.
One major advantage for the west: they were able to develop a billion strong market for their technology. But that’s about it.

29. Another key point people often forget:
The west is not the leader of the n most stuff.
Even among something like cars, the real market has already been captured by the Asian nations.

30.
Pandemic came as a great excuse to get out of China. That’s all.

31. The side effect:
Young men don’t have enough money to buy yet to be designed buildings from shady chinese real estate companies more famous for constructing tofu buildings which will collapse at the slightest of gusts. Never forget that these buildings were just investments.

32. Even those families who decide to stay in these fragile buildings are doing so only because it’s the only way to circumvent hukou restrictions.

33. What’s actually evergrande.
It’s just a company that build apartments that nobody used, but that made a few provinces, government officials and a few shareholders rich. Even those who bought were only using it as a kind of costly workarounds to archaic rules.

I end rant here