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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

> and the banks are actually pretty good at deciding who is too risky to lend money to, so why should this be a surprise?

Well, what you say is certainly true in America. But is it necessarily true in China?

Those are the kinds of assumptions that may not hold as you cross borders.

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Wouldn't it be even more true in China, given the big brother system they have in place? The government (and by extension, the banks) knows more about its citizens than say, the U.S government. Hell, they just issued a "social credit score" to every citizen - it's similar to a financial credit score and just goes to show just how many things they're keeping tabs on.

Source: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/04/24/china-assigns-every-...

Things don't work like that at all in China. Even the basic "financial credit score" is in a very immature state at the moment

No, banks in China lend in order to achieve strategic targets set by the government, and for reasons of political patronage.

Lending is not fully market driven.

This is not necessarily personal lending, it's grey market business lending, so it's not about 'credit scores'.

Given what I have heard about social credit I wouldn't be surprised one bit of one sector of shadow banking is perfectly creditworthy people whose only additional risk as a lender is lack of being repaid due to being disappeared or arrested on 'it means what we want it to mean' charges.

The whole concept of social credit is what I refer to as stupid-evil. For one its whole concept is obviously exploitable as a 'recruit the low credit and purge the high credit' list if anyone ever want to form an insurrection powered by their newly minted low caste. And that is without the obvious side effects of people reacting accordingly to the actual information like not trusting anyone with top-tier social credit as likely too powerful to be held accountable and will thus screw you over at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately even the US has had a similar issue to a thankfully far lesser degree with the idiotic "Operation Choke Point" abuse of power. Such abuses should always be reigned in.

It's very interesting that all of these events are starting to converge this year

- Yuan falling 10% since January

- Shanghai Composite falling 25% since January

- Trump's 20% tariff on $200 Billion Chinese import

- Trump's threat of tariff on $500 Billion Chinese import

- EU and US agreeing on free trade

- EU and Japan agreeing on free trade

- US, Japan, and Australia forming an alliance to invest in SE Asia.

- Xi Jing Ping becomes president for life

- Anbang, Wanda, HNA being taken over by Chinese government

- Manufacturers prompted by tariffs to move out of China

- Xi Jing Ping's Made in China 2025 plan to have everything made in China

- Malaysia, one of the one road one belt's strongest partner, pushes back on future Chinese projects, citing corruption.

If I had to guess, China's economic collapse is near

Stop creating a new account just to post things like this

...is there something I'm missing? While I'm not sure I agree with parent's conclusion, they bring up valid topics for discussion and seem to be contributing value to the conversation. Is parent poster known for creating new accounts, and how can you tell? Why do you believe that they did not simply decide to create an account to comment here because they had something to contribute?

Also, there's a certain irony to this being your second ever comment.

Also it's not hard to imagine the sort of situation what would make one hesitate to speak frankly on the record about economic prospects for China: living there or doing business with people who live there.

Like you said, I normally don't post comments, so I agree there's irony here. However, recently I found some newly created accounts posting comments like the one above. Some of them are getting warnings from admins. Granted my comments aren't contributing either. So, sorry about that.

What are the approved reasons to create a new account? Can you point me to a page supporting your assertion?

The last entry in the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) says:

"Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create them routinely. On HN, users should have an identity that others can relate to."

There's room for interpretation here, but I think it's fair to say that the preferred default is the consistent use of a single permanent identifier. Do you prefer a different approach?

Of all your points, the protectionist approach is the only credible threat to China's economy. Protectionism has always doomed countries. Much of China's growth over the last twenty years is directly attributable to opening the markets to foreign investment.

"Protectionism has always doomed countries"

I'm not sure if this is true.

Less developed economies that tried to be protectionist obviously were hurt by it (many examples: India, China etc.)

But large swaths oft the economies of most, even developed nations are protected. Banking, telecoms, agriculture, military and in many cases broadcast entertainment and energy - are still protected to this day.

And then of course de-facto protectionism of state-backed or related entities.

Large open economies usually have more to gain relatively speaking than do smaller open economies, which risk being gobbled up.

Should rephrase my original comment to blanket protectionism. What works well is a "soft touch" where a local sector is supported just enough to remain competitive with foreign entities. That approach could equally be labeled "increasing competition", and is proven to work well.

Honestly, on paper I see US collapse coming closer then China, or May be EU first. The Chinese population still has bank savings that is double their GDP. DOUBLE!.

Which is something no western media want to cover, for one reason or another.

I see lot of medium to small problem in China, largely fixable and are being fixed right now. For US I see lots of large problems, ticking bombs and it seems no one want to touch it.

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